Sometimes I feel like I should downsize my collection. I don't want to. It wouldn't be by choice. I love having the quantity of great Yankee cards that I do. A lot of it is just due to where I live. In NYC-area housing, space is limited. With two kids, space is even more limited. I'm sure once I do move to a bigger place (in the next year or so), I'll have more room to store my collection and can laugh at the thought of downsizing.
But it gets me thinking sometimes. If my wife said that I can only keep one box of cards, what would I keep? She's very reasonable and patient, so she never would, but what if one day she said, "I'm sick of the daily bubble mailers. You get one box, and only one box." What would I keep?
Now, if I only get one box, I'm going to get everything I can out of it. So I'm going to go with this box:
Now hmmm, what would I keep? Well, i gotta keep my nearly 700 Tinos. And with thick relics and whatnot, that would probably take up at least one whole row.
I'd also need to keep my TTM autographs. I've put a lot of time into those, especially my Topps Yankees collection.
I'd keep the majority of my Yankee relics as well. I'm still in the camp where relics feel special, likely because I never pull them from packs. They haven't gotten old for me. I wouldn't be able to keep them all, but I'm thinking 25 or 30.
Jeter. I have a few hundred. Those aren't going anywhere.
My vintage! I couldn't give up my vintage cards. Perhaps 1965 and earlier would stay, plus guys like Mantle, Ford, and Munson later on.
Prospects! I have to keep a few of those around. Maybe even one day one will pan out and I'll be able to cash in. Not why I do it, but still...
Non-baseball. I'd have to keep my 50 or so Michael Jordan cards.
Then, I'd probably keep a large assortment of other Yankees cards, from the 70s-today. Not being a set collector would actually come in handy here, since I wouldn't have to worry about keeping complete sets together.
So now I ask you. If you had to condense to just one box, what would you keep?
I'd pretty much keep my Brewers collection. But I'd make sure that I got as big a box that I could find.
ReplyDeleteBefore I get started, I love this post idea... I actually am trying to reduce the size of my collection, and after getting rid of the low-hanging fruit, it's proving to be a difficult thing to do.
ReplyDeleteWhat would I keep? My run of Topps sets from 1974 to 1978, my 1964 Topps Giants partial set, a healthy cross-section of my Mets collection, my 1974/75 O-Pee-Chee WHA set, at least a couple of cards from every set from the 1950's through the 1980's... and I've probably already blown past the 5000 cards that fit in a Monster box.
By the way, I love the Mantle card... it's good to know that there really is such a thing as poor-conditioned HOFer cards, you'd never know from looking at a card show.
I'm glad to see one of the cards I sent made the cut.. (56 Coleman)
ReplyDeleteWow. What a tough question! I just started putting more of my collection into binders so I could enjoy the cards more and now you're making me condense it down to one monster box. Man, that hurts.
ReplyDeleteMy 700+ Ryne Sandbergs, 300+ Kerry Wood cards, 90+ Kosuke Fukudome cards, all of my autos and relics, all of my vintage cards of Cubs Hall of Famers, my favorite cards from my childhood collecting days, my '78 Topps set, and all of my Cubs prospects.
It sounds like a lot, but I'm pretty sure it would all fit in a monster box.
My IP autos, TTM autos, my Sega Card Gen Yankees cards, a few vintage cards and some MiLB cards issued by the teams (or leagues).
ReplyDeleteUgh that would be tough. I think I would keep my McCutchen and Bay collections for sure. The rest of the box would be full of my WVU collection and short print Pirates.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the great answers!
ReplyDelete