Organizational progress

Since blogging started for me in 2011, I've moved from New York City's Upper East Side to Hoboken to a rental in my current town to purchasing right here in Essex County, NJ.

As a result, my collection has been on the move multiple times, boxed up and never really finding a permanent place until now.

The one drawback to the house we purchased is that there isn't really an office or room for a man cave. I always wanted one, but it wasn't necessarily a "must-have" on our checklist when looking at houses. The real estate market here in the Jersey burbs is super competitive, and a house that checks off every box just isn't realistic, especially when within a certain budget.

What my house did have is a "finished" attic. I say "finished" because it was probably finished about 40 years ago, complete with ugly yellowish/orange carpet that still resides in there today. There is also an unfinished portion good for storage of Christmas decorations and old baby clothes, and a bathroom with a cast iron tub that must weigh a few tons. Seriously, that thing is never moving, at least not whole.

I did manage to carve out a small corner of the finished part of the attic for my card collection. While it'll never be the perfect spot and someplace to chill, there's no reason I can't use it to be more organized, especially for a place to quickly store cards coming in and going out. I admittedly fell behind the eight ball when sorting, and as a result, cards piled up and it became unwelcome and daunting.

While far from done, I'm on the right track. Here is everything in December:

And here is everything as of last night:

See? Still a ways to go, but much more manageable. And I now have a process for anything unsorted that I can get to a box at a time versus just being so overwhelmed that I don't do anything.

And how ugly is that carpet? Gross. But on the list of things the house still needs, this isn't even close to the top.

Eventually I hope to get a desk in there, and maybe even a TV to watch some games while sorting. For now, I'm happy with the progress!

Help! Card storage in a hot attic

Welcome to June.

While it's presently fairly chilly in the northeast for this time of year, something happened in mid-May that concerned me about the well-being of my cards.

The temperature went up.

We had a mini heat wave, with temps in high 80s and touching 90, which was unusual for that time of year. I went up to the attic in my house to look for something, and the heat was already fairly sweltering up there. You know that stifling, heavy heat in your grandma's attic? That's what this felt like.

Big deal, right? It's an attic. It's supposed to be hot in the summer and cold in the winter, especially when you live in a 103-year-old center hall colonial.

Here is the problem: my cards are in the attic.

I have a few shelves up there where I store my cards, literally because I have no other space to call my own. The portion of the attic that holds my cards is finished. It's technically a bedroom. It's got painted walls and an ugly orange carpet that is at least 30 years old. There's a bathroom and coat closet, and across the mini hall is the unfinished, more traditional storage portion of the attic. Someday we'll redo it all and make it nice, but that's way down on the priority list.

It serves its purpose now as a guest room (although no one has slept in it), storage, and more specifically, card storage.

So my question is: what the heck do I do? Is it ok for my cards to be in the upcoming sweltering heat? Are there any measure I can take to preserve them a little better? Central air is not an option, by the way.

Maybe it won't make a difference and my cards will be fine. Does anyone know? Has anyone had to deal with similar conditions?

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On an unrelated note, Julie from A Cracked Bat is holding a contest to celebrate Post #100. Go ENTER HERE.

Organizing a personal collection is exhausting

I'm trying to update my Tino Martinez Collection tab up above. I really want to document all of the cards I have in my Tino PC. So I figured today I'd try and put a dent it. The girl had to work all day, so I was going to watch the Daytona 500 and try to highlight all the cards I have so I can be particular about what I request in a trade or what lots I look for on eBay. I only got though about 10-20% of my Tino's. Arrrgh. I still have about 400 different base cards to highlight, but at least those are in chronological order in a binder. So that will hopefully go a bit quicker than all the inserts I just went through. Either way, it's a tedious job!

How do you organize your cards?

I’ve set aside a chunk of time this weekend to organize my card “collection.” I put collection in quotes because I only have a few cards at  my current home – all the old stuff I have from when I really collected is stored in 3200 count boxes and binders in my childhood home. When I moved to New York City, I had to leave a lot of those behind because space is such a premium. I now live in a shoebox, much like my '80s junk wax. I gave my parents strict instruction not to throw them out (hmm, sounds like a Topps set), although I’m sure 90% of them are crap anyways. But I know I’ve got plenty of good cards from the 1990s and early 2000s there, and at some point in the future I’ll go through them.

Anyhow, what I do have here with me now is about 90% of my Tino Martinez collection – both inserts and commons (it hurts me to call you common Tino, it really does), and two binders and a few boxes full of various Yankee cards. Plus I have a case of any valuable cards I do I have – higher end inserts, autographs, etc.

However, I don’t love how my personal collection is organized. It feels too all-over the place. Tino's are in a binder – pretty much by year but not perfectly chronological - as well as about 50 or so in top loaders/screw cases. The Yanks are in a binders and boxes and that's fine. And recently, I’ve bought a few packs/boxes of cards, and the base cards/commons are sitting in their boxes waiting to find new owners. How do you guys organize your base cards/trade fodder? Do you use 3200 count boxes? Binders? Leave them in stacks on your dresser?

I know that everyone organizes a bit differently, so I’d love to hear how people with far bigger collections than mine store/organize their cards. Anything specific for player collections? For cards you have no use for or might like to move in a trade? I’m curious to hear you methods. Leave a comment and let me know.