Tips On Collecting: Sorting Football Cards

Bloggers Note: This is the s of a series of 4 Tips On Collecting Sorting edition. Now remember, this is how I sort my cards. These tips are to give you some ideas on what you may want to do with your own collection and not what you have to do. Since I don't sell any cards and keep what I get, there is a lot to sort and this is how I break it all down.

It all starts with a pack or two of football cards. After opening them up, you may ask, what do I do with them now? Some of you may toss the base cards in the trash or off to the side. Then you may take out your PC stuff and then the rest is for sale. As for how I would sort these, this isn't how I would do it.

Now, my form of sorting is a little time consuming. But I am very well organized. Here is how I would sort the football cards:

After opening up the football cards, I know there is a long road to sorting. First I search for PC, NY Giants. Pile One. I then take out the inserts or hits for Pile 2 and 3 is if there is a jersey or auto hits. After that I take out all of the non autographed/ jersey rookies making up Pile 4. Pile 5 will consist of Star players (players I consider a star based on if they are listed under a products pricing in Beckett and a few others I like as well). And that leaves pile 6, which are base cards. There is even a Pile 7 but that will come later on.

Now with Pile 1, I separate my favorite NY Giants pile out players out. Eli Manning, Hakeem Nicks, Victor Cruz, David Wilson, Reuben Randle. Those guys are my favorite and get a section to themselves in the NY Giants binder. After that, the rookies get their own section. The remaining Giants just go into the binder in the back section. I sometimes will have to backtrack to make sure I don't have duplicates of the cards I am putting in. Those duplicates I put into Pile 7. I label the outside of the binder with a NYG1. All of my binders are labeled.

Pile 2, With the inserts,  I take out the star players I keep like I do in Pile 5 and place them that pile. I also pull any rookie inserts and put them by themselves. They get placed into a binder marked RC Inserts. This is the only sport I do this with. With the rest of the inserts I put them into my insert binder unless the insert is valued above $20. The ones valued over $20 get placed into a penny sleeve, top loader and are placed into a tote that is labeled inserts. If there are any duplications, those get pulled and placed into another pile which we call Pile 7.

Pile 3, jersey or thick cards are placed into a 50-100 count plastic box. If I happen to have a 25 count box, which is a perfect size for jersey cards without damaging them, I use that so they are all in their own cases. The autographs I place into penny sleeves then into top loaders and into a separate tote.

Pile 4 of rookies gets separated by teams. Then they are placed into a binder that way as well. The binder has separators with team names. If there are any duplications, I keep em. Hobby is all about rookies and you never know who will turn big.

Pile 5 of star players get sorted by player, then placed into a 800 count white box labeled Ftball players on the outside. Each player is labeled and separated by index cards. I used to store these in binders but found it easier to use the boxes. If there are any duplications, those get pulled and placed into pile 7. Sometimes with these it takes extra work if you buy older products. I go through and search just to make sure I don't have any duplications between the new one I just got and to the older ones already in the box. Can be time consuming.

Pile 6 can be the most time consuming of all. I take all of the base cards, sort them by number. I then place them into 800 count white boxes. I label them by brand and year. The outside of the box I put a number depending on what box I am on but for an example the number 7. I then take the number 7, write it into a book. And write the contents inside for easy searching if I happen to buy more of the product or have to go back and search for a player. Depending on how many I have of each product, every box holds between 6-7 different brands.

And finally this leaves us with Pile 7, which is the duplications. The inserts I use for giveaways on here along with other cards:) The double base cards and star players I use to build the Yard Sale boxes I spoke of on the blog a couple of times. Keeping the hobby alive at a cheap price!

Now this seems like a lot of work and yes it is. So don't ever fall too far behind on sorting. But I find this sorting really efficient and easy to find stuff you need or are looking for. Not to mention weeds out your doubles.

Let me know your thoughts on this crazy sorting. And how you sort your football cards.

Update: We also forgot to add what we do with cards such as Upper Deck, Press Pass and Sage. Since these cards we don't consider rookies since they are not NFL licensed, they get put into a small to medium sized binder marked by the year we get them. For example, we picked up some Upper Deck and Sage Hit 2013. They are presently sitting in a binder marked 2013.