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.  

The Great Blog Reorganization Project of 2015

I had to work from home today to get some stuff done around here. The summer is a slow time in the law as it is in other professions as well -- yes, lawyers do take vacations from time to time, and the trial calendars tend to be fewer and farther between in the summer...probably because judges also take vacations.

So, when given the opportunity today to work from home, I did that for a few hours.  Then, I did some reorganization here on the blog.

You may have noticed that I changed the background last week. I decided to go with a cleaner, easier-to-look-at background of blue and old-school Brewers logo.  I like the cleaner look, and that, I suppose, is the important thing.  It'll change in the future, I'm sure.

The second thing I did is more organizational.  Unlike a few folks who are undergoing a complete collection reorganization, I decided to make my want lists a bit more user friendly. Once again, while I'm hopeful that everyone else will like it, it really is more for me than for anyone else.  

You see, I have had this blog organized around the years that cards were issued for quite some time now. And, it worked for a while -- for the time it took me to start getting a lot of cards in that I didn't have before and as my initial effort at organization.

But, as I started looking at other lists online that other bloggers have, I realized it could be improved. More to the point, whenever I was at a card show, I'd spend so much damn time trying to find the correct year for the group of cards I was looking at that sometimes I'd just say "to hell with it" and buy cards on the hope that I didn't have them -- because I didn't want to take the time to try to find my place.

So, instead, I've reorganized by the name of the company that issued the cards.  I've got the Milwaukee Braves broken out by pre-1970 and post-1970 cards.  

For the Brewers, I have it broken down into a number of categories:

Oddballs, Team Issues, & Short-Term Manufacturers

The Oddballs page includes Sportflics, food issues, the Wizards of the West Coast cards, Kellogg's, Star Company, TCMA, Classic, SSPC, and whatever else doesn't fit into the other pages.  Along with the Oddballs, I created the "Team Issue/Police Set/Stadium Giveaway" page because of all the cards that beer companies and cops have given away at County Stadium over the years.

Then, the Major Manufacturers.  We have Bowman (post-1989), Donruss (including the Panini revival of the brand), Fleer/Ultra/Flair, O-Pee-Chee (including the Upper Deck revival), Pacific, Panini, Score (including Pinnacle), Topps pre-2000, Topps post-2000, and Upper Deck.

Hopefully, these want lists will be more useful, and it won't be as daunting of a task for me to update them as it feels like it has been in the past for me.

Finally, speaking of card shows and because no post should be posted without a photo, I recently got a PWE from a formerly active blogger named Von from Von's Cards.  I first met Von at my usual card show last year in May, and we have run into one another on a few occasions since then. I've sent him a few cards he was looking for, and this time he sent me a card that I can always use:

A serial-numbered Brewers post-win celebration in the form of Corey Hart will always be welcome in my house.

Von, thank you very much for the card.