Organizing and Reorganizing

Watching card content on social media and YouTube these days, I feel like a total Old Guy. So many folks got back into collecting during COVID--at the same time as I was sitting it out and trying not to get sick--that my having gotten back into the hobby initially in 2014 makes me feel like a veteran. 

But I find myself now questioning how I organized things back in 2014. Perhaps that is because Topps started to issue so many sets, or more pointedly, so many parallels that trying to collect anything more than a few things is a fool's game. Or maybe I just want a new reason/excuse to go through my Brewers collection again. 

Either way, I am thinking about reorganzing my Topps binders in particular as follows:

1. The "Flagship" binder: for use with the base Topps set and the Traded/Update set and perhaps other similar use of the flagship design (like 1st Edition or the 1994 Bilingual set).

2012 Update Ryan Braun All-Star SP

2. The "Tobacco" Binder: This one is for Topps 206, A&G, Gypsy Queen (RIP), Turkey Red, and other similar sets.

3. The 1990s Originals: An excuse to put Finest and Stadium Club (and their spinoffs) into their own binder together.

4. Chrome: For Chrome and its many, many variants. 

Garrett Mitchell's 2023 Logofractor

5. Kid-Oriented: A place to put Topps Kids, Big League, Big, Fire, Holiday, Bunt, and Opening Day (RIP), among others

Some numbered to 99 Fire Variant from 2018

6. On Demand: Everything from Topps Now to Throwback Thursdays to the oversized moneygrabs to the Steve Aoki collaborations

7. Higher End: Things like Museum Collection, Tribute, Triple Threads, Sterling, Five Star, Inception, etc.

I couldn't leave this Aramis Ramirez Museum Collection Copper behind at a recent card show

8. Archives: The binder for recycled Designs and the mixed retired player/current player sets of that ilk, like Heritage, Archives, Archives Signature Series, All-Time Fan Favorites, Cracker Jack, and anything similar

9. Regularly Revisited: Stuff like Gallery, Pristine, maybe Rookie Cup, maybe Topps Total, maybe High Tek--the sets that get issued maybe three or four years in a row, then go away, then return again in five or six years. 

10. The One-Offs/Limited Runs: A parking lot to put the Yugos of Topps's history, like DIII, Embossed, Bazooka, Co-Signers, Ticket to Stardom, Unique, Attax, Legacy, American Pie, HD, Stars--things that were out for maybe 3-4 years at the most, perhaps consecutively, which are out there.

11. Oddballs/Food Sets/Promo Sets: Everything from Supers in the early 1970s to Scratchoffs in 1981 to the Drake's sets to the Post Cereal sets of the early 2000s to those bubble packed Team sets to the recent Baseball Card Day stadium giveaways. 

This set helped set socks in 2019. 

The obvious point is that I can organize my cards in any way that I feel like organizing them. But I feel like I want the parallels and inserts to be with the base set from each year instead of being in different binders--that it would be easier to organize my collection in that way. 

My question to you all--especially you team collectors--is this:

How do you have your cards organized? Binders? Boxes? By Player? By Manufacturer?

I'd love to hear how y'all do it.  

Pressing F5 to Refresh The Blog

It's been just four months that I've been "Off Hiatus."  In many respects, I am still way behind in figuring things out.  I mean, I'm still complaining about all the parallels and inserts when the fact is that those things have been filling up packs and collections for over 20 years now.  

In other respect, though, I have a much clearer vision and idea of what I'm collecting and why than I ever have in my life.  In the 1980s, I was a pack rat.  I pretty much kept anything and everything.  In many respects, that is a good thing for my collecting these days because I still have most of that stuff and because much of that "stuff" is Brewer collectibles that I would want anyway.

In some respects, though, I have a lot of cards and sets that are surplus to requirements.  I'm happy to have two rookie cards of Wade Boggs from the 1983 Topps set, but the only good thing about that is that I have two rookie cards of Wade Boggs.  And yes, I'm glad I have complete sets of 1982 Topps, 1983 Topps, Donruss, and Fleer, 1984 Fleer and Topps, etc., but I'm not sure at this point that I care that I have those.  They sit in the same box, pretty much, in which I got them 30 years ago.  I don't look at them.

This type of thing has been gnawing at me lately.  It does not comport with my collecting philosophy in 2014 to have boxes of cards from 1984 or 1985 that are not a part of my Brewers or Milwaukee Braves collection.  Yet, I'm not in a position where I want to jettison those cards completely -- at least not yet, I don't think.  I struggle with that.

I feel like I need to contemplate in my collecting the questions that the great Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin was contemplating while he lived in Tahiti with the massive canvas that he painted in 1897-1898 called, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" As an aside, if you are an art lover and get the opportunity to see this in person in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, by all means do so.

As I think about Gauguin's questions in my head, things get clearer.  I came from a position from which many bloggers have started -- reacquainting myself with what cards I have, what cards have been available in the past, and what cards are available now. I'm close to getting a handle on what I have and what I need. 

All the trades and packages I have gotten from fellow bloggers and readers have helped fill in gaps in my collection.  Before, I could say without reservation that sending me Brewers from any set with a date between 1991 and 2010 would be sufficient to give me 100% cards that I need for my collection.  I can't say that any more.  The window is smaller and the number of sets I don't have is smaller, though the number of cards I think I need seems to grow regularly as I discover additional sets, Milwaukee Stadium Giveaways, etc., that I want.  So, tighter and more coherent organization is needed but it's getting there.

Yet, where I am now is a better place.

With all these things in mind, I've started working on revamping this blog to make it cleaner, easier to use for others and for me, and easier for me and others to find things.

So, here's what I've done so far.

I have nested the Robin Yount collection page as a linked page off my "Player Collections" tab, and I have added the update date to each tab there. I'll still be updating my Robin Yount list regularly as I add new items -- I mean, I still don't have literally hundreds to thousands of Yount items, and I'll never have a "complete" set certainly -- but I'm also working on creating complete lists for each of my player collections.  That level of organization has escaped me to this point as I sort through cards, but I'm getting closer with each passing day of having my sorting done.

Second, I've changed the "Brewers Want List" to being just a "Want List" that will encompass all the cards that I would like to get -- whether it is for the Archives sets, for my Gary Carter collection, for my Brewers "collect everything" collection, or a player collection.  To make them easier to follow and have somewhat less scrolling involved, I have broken the lists into groupings by year.  I'm sure there will still be plenty of scrolling, but it will be less than before. Also, you will see that a lot of the cards and items listed there will have (x2) after them as a reflection of needing two of a certain card for both his PC and the Brewers collection.

Finally, I'm working on listing out my "trade bait by team."  Those lists will not contain all the base set cards I have for each team, but I am trying to list out the more interesting oddballs, relics, autographs, and inserts for each team that I have that I am willing to trade away.  As of this moment, I have completed the Diamondbacks, the Braves, and the Orioles, so take a look if you are a fan of one of those teams to see if I have anything in which you are interested.

So, that's a lot of text again from me.  At least I'm not whining about the 2014 Archives set again.

Getting Organized

One of the most difficult things I have dealt with in getting back into baseball card collecting is figuring out what I have, what I don't, and why I still have all those 1989 Topps cards.

Then again, nearly anyone who collected cards in the 1980s and 1990s says that about 1989 Topps cards.

In trying to get my bearings about me and my feet underneath me, I've started putting together lists of the cards and items I would like to get for my collection.  At the same time, I'm also trying to figure out what items I am willing to trade away to get new stuff and also whether there is any demand at all for the things I have.

So, I read a lot of blogs.  A ton.  And not just the ones I link to at the right.  Those tend to be my starting points, but then I jump from reading those to looking at the blogs they link to for new stuff, and so on and so on.  I have found a few people here and there whom I've e-mailed or on whose blogs I've commented -- some with success, some with deafening silence -- and then I have tried to use a couple of different websites with trading functions to try to set stuff up.

I haven't learned anything I wouldn't have otherwise thought to be the case.  Some people are incredibly nice, very prompt, and extremely friendly and welcoming.  Others are gruff and tend to view dealing with people with trepidation and dismay. Still others, well, it takes them a while to get to nearly everything.

In other words, baseball card bloggers are like everyone else in the world.

Anyway, I have put together some want lists that I have linked from the tabs above.  And, hey, if you've read this far, you should see a pretty picture.  How about a Paul Molitor Milwaukee Police Department card from 1986?

Yay! Pictures!