General Forum

My wife hit me with a question that I didn't have such a great answer for.  You all these valuable cards what happens if the house catches on fire.  I told her I'll grab my cards and you grab the kids.

Right now I'm using boxes that hold about 240 top loaders per box.  Most boxes occupy a set year with stone boxes holding multiple years. I even have my cards sorted in order based on this site.  If I go to browse collection gallery that's the order in which my cards would be. Obviously graded and larger cards are stored in a seperate box. 

I don't believe there is a fireproof option to hold all my cards,  so my question is...

Do you store base cards with your high dollar items?

Do you use any sort of safe or fireproof option? 

I read several years ago about an autograph collector that acutally built a fireproof room for his collection.  I'm sure that's unreasonable for most of us. 

You can invest in a fireproof safe for the best of your collection.  I've seen some the size of refridgerators.

I think most of us though would just cry... a LOT, if anyhing happened like a fire.

I could say the best thing to do is have insurance that has a good amount of coverage in personal property and really catalogue your collection. The company I work for insures personal property At 75% of the home. Messing in a 400k home you have 300k personal property. That may or may not cover your cards. But I recommend the hard to collect or more expensive in a fireproof/waterproof safe. It will allow you to save on the cost of replacement. Plus on here if it is catalogued and something happens, you can move the whole collection to want list and let people know what happened and I'm sure you will get a few trade request with nothing from you. 

I am not so sure cards are considered personal property. as the case with jewelry, silverware, and furs your insurance company may have a limt for collectables around $2,500 total. Its a good idea to check with your insurance agent as to what category trading cards would fall under. You can always purchase "inland marine" coverage if they are not considered personal property and would actually cover them everywhere and not just your home (like a wedding ring). Luckily for us, we already have a list put together of what items we have, which is the hardest part. Source- i am an insurance agent in NY

PC stuff goes into binders. I do have a small box that fits one-touch for the thick patch cards and cards from The Cup. And one small box that can fit standard graded cards for that type. Traders go into 3 row boxes with soft sleeve and/or top loaders. Things that are "in queue" are in 5 row boxes (3 of those).

The bulk of my baseball card collection is in 4 row boxes and I've got at least 60 of those.

I use top loaders with superior fit sleeves for all of my PC rookies, hall of fame rookies, and serial numbered cards (maybe some higher level inserts too). I have maybe 20 cards in one touches with superior fits. I am a player collector so i have maybe 7 or 8 "card folios" that contain only one player in each. I also sort of color coded them. Green folio for Aaron Rodgers, Scottie Pippen gets red, etc. These are the binders where you cant see the backs of cards but i like the way they look.  I then have 3 ring binders for misc. cards. Maybe i am trying to complete an insert set, so all the cards are together there. I try to keep uniformity on each 9 pocket page, like cards together. All of my "for trade" cards are lined up in those cardboard, 3 row boxes and most of them are penny sleeved, especially the ones that are organized by team or any chrome cards. There are some cards in limbo but mostly they all have a place.

I looked into it more and you are right about needing to have an extra coverage. But like anything with getting paid for an insurance claim you need to catalogue everything. So catalogue your cards and you will have an easier time. 

Most of my cards are from the junk wax era or modern day commons. If there's a fire, I'm not going to bother with them. There are more important things in the house.

My Buehrle collection = cards into sleeves -> then into card savers -> then into PSA sleeves-> then into BCW Vault box

My Japanese menko collection = straight into tobacco card pages in a binder (differently-shaped pages needed)

My PSA Seung-yuop Lee collection = All slabbed in a heavy duty, black collector case

All other cards = sleeved and put into BCW cardboard storage boxes