Sorting:Baseball

Last year I tweeted out this photo on Twitter of my desk,

 

Immediately I had a comment of "wow that's such a disaster someone please help this guy sort things out." 

I responded with, "that's not a mess, that's how I sort. It's a bit complex."

I made a promise to that individual that I would do a segment to explain my sorting and here I am.

It really isn't as complex as it looks, at least to me. But, it is a bit in-depth with as much as I collect and as many sports as I collect.

So I thought I would make this series breaking down everything I collect and how I sort it. I hope this will explain the picture I tweeted and maybe give you some ideas for your own collection on how to sort.

Today I am starting with baseball.

When I take a stack of baseball cards, I split them into many sections. This is something I have done every since I have been in the hobby. 24+ years of the same thing.

My first section is valuable insert cards and hits which spread across everything including the NY Yankees. Anything I feel that has good "book value" for inserts, $25+, and any hits get set off to the side to be placed in penny sleeves, toploaders or 10ct plastic boxes for jersey cards or thick cards. These all get placed into 2-row shoe box houses by sport. There are boxes I mark for hits and another for inserts.

 

Next, I start a NY Yankees pile since they are my baseball team. The Yankees pile however does not include Derek Jeter, Aaron Judge and any Yankee Prospects or rookies. I will touch base on those in a minute. But, all other Yankees including inserts go into this pile to be placed into a binder. One of my projects for 2018 is possibly sorting these Yankee binders by player but it will be quite the project and may be one I don't get to this year. It would be a help though just in case I have doubles I can send someone else.

 

Now onto Aaron Judge and Derek Jeter. They get put into their own separate piles as I player collect them as well. Each of them has their own respected binder.

  

   

All of my prospects, rookies and rookie inserts/parallels including Yankees, get their own pile and go into a rookie binder. The one issue I have with the binder is not separating this more in-depth and it is my main project this summer as I plan to separate the inserts, parallels and base rookies by team so I can locate things easier then flipping through a ton of pages and binders. This project may lead me to making a Yankees rookie card binder all in itself as well.

Speaking of pages, I am also thinking about pulling all of my late 80's early 90's rookie cards from the binders since I feel they are taking up page space and would be much better suited in a box. Do I really need to keep 15 Donruss Curt Schilling rookies in a binder??

  

  

Another pile I pull from the stack is key players/stars and of course my main man Ken Griffey Jr. These are only the base and less-valuable inserts I pull and place in this pile as I mentioned above what I do with more valuable inserts. Obviously Griffey Jr has his own binder but players like Mike Piazza, Roger Clemens, Tony Gwynn, Ozzie Smith, Cal Ripken Jr, Giancarlo Stanton (his Yankee cards will go into the Yankee binder in 2018), Mike Trout, and many, many others go into a 4 or 5 row box and indexed. I also add new players every year if they are stars or ones I expect to be. So in 2018 players like Yoan Moncada and Cody Bellingers will appear in here.

 

 

Here are the by-players indexed.

Baseball inserts, less-valuable ones and excluding star players, find themselves in a binder by themselves. I really need to work on these binders as well and reorganize them by putting same sets together.

 

When everything is bindered, they get stacked on shelves. Not standing up of course as that damages cards in the long run. They are stacked alternating so one side doesn't get squished and so I can fit many on one shelf. You may notice numbers on the outside of the binders. At one point I used to number them and keep what's in them in a notebook but that got too complicated with the alternating as I can't see all of the numbers now.

And finally, the scraps. This is everything I don't collect or put into binders. The base of the base. These are put into 800 ct boxes by team and fit nicely under my desk. Some teams have already reached the 2 box level. These cards I used to put by brand, year and number but I dismantled that last year in my box resorting project as I feel it's easier putting them by team and I don't ever plan on putting together most of those sets I had once started.

As for baseball sets I used to collect or have bought, they stay in their original boxes or these ones if I hand collated them.

Another part I failed to mention, is my giveaway/trade pile. I pull that stuff out and set it aside as I go along for people I normally trade with and which giveaways I run.

Well, that's it for Part 1 of this series. There is much, much more to go with multiple sports and non sports to discuss.

Thanks for reading and your thoughts on my sorting are welcomed in comments.