General Forum

I probably have only about 5,000 cards or so.  How often do you guys with huge collections actually take them out?  Whether to just look them over, sort them, or something else?

Every time I home and I going through my trades I received I go through my collection they're all in albums they all Blanca certain place and sometimes it surprise me about the car I had I didn't think I had I forgot I had

I don't look at them unless I'm putting cards into an album or putting them in their box. Sadly once a set is complete I'll probably never look at it again. Things might change when the grandson gets older but for now that's what the reality is.

I make a point of it, with varying success. I don't see the point in collecting something and then never appeciating it. Perhaps because I saw my father collecting things, but then be stifled from enjoying them -- trains in particular. So I have hundreds of cards on display. Not a day goes by when I don't pick up one or two of those cards and just check them out for a few minutes. I have many complete sets, and it is difficult to go through them all. I tried to literally go through every card systematically at least once every seven years or so. But other interests and life gets in the way. So, mostly to look at the cards, partly for practical reasons, I just reorganized all my pre-1965 cards, which means I had to handle/look at every single one. Just finished that project last night. I've spent a lot on the collection lately, so I'll probably dial back the acquisitions a bit. In that dial-back period I'll pick out some sets and just page through them. I haven't looked at 1972 in awhile....

Anyway, while I take great joy in adding to my collection, I take just as much joy in revisiting the cards I have. I put a lot of money and work into those cards; I don't intend to leave them buried in my memory. Every time I look through a set, I'm reminded of some player, some game, some memory. I love it. 

v3

I enjoy looking at my cards - especially during baseball season, I will pull cards out while watching a game and send pictures of unusual cards to my son - who is also a collector.

It depends on the cards. I go through my binder of best cards every few weeks, my Yankees binder once every month or two. The rest of the cards I don't look at very much. The 1,000+ cards all over my desk I look at every day. 

This is a high priority for me.  I've scaled down my collecting goals a lot over the past few years to allow more time to just sit with and enjoy the cards I have.   Anything in my collection I don't feel the urge to look at very much likely ends up on the tradelist.  I only want to keep what I feel drawn to look at, which is mostly turning out to be Topps & Update complete sets in binders.  I can spend hours and not get bored.  I'm looking at the stats most of the time.  I want to learn/remember as many players as I can.  With baseball, I find the more you know the players' histories the more enjoyable watching games becomes.  I have tons of games I play in my mind while looking at a set. For example, before I look at the back, I'll quiz myself and try to remember some stat, then I'll flip it to see if I was right.   Other times, I'll focus on the photo and try to pinpoint what I like/don't like about it and see if I find others with similar aspects.  Is the player batting, fielding, pitching, something else?  Day? Night? Sky visible? grass visible? dirt visible?stands visible? background focused or not? home uni?away uni? Other players visible? Umpires?  and many many more...

I don't look at the physical cards all that often. Getting access to them is not always easy... depending on my health that day I sometimes physically can't get them out. 

That's why I decided to scan them all back in 2009. I did fronts only until I joined up here in 2012...I look at the scans every single day. No, not all of them, there's too many for that. But I constantly am going into some album and just looking through what's in there. 

I've found the scanning aspect of the collection has brought new fun things to the hobby for me. Before I only stored the cards by set, so that's all how everything was. Now, I make copies of the scans and store them by person and team as well, if applicable. Seeing where the newly scanned cards slot into a person's file is fun for me. They don't have to be new additions either, just newly scanned. I especially enjoy the team pages on the Cardboard History Gallery. I update them on the first of each month and I enjoy seeing what cards get into the first page.  Seeing the teams build up for hockey has been fun. (Most of the NBA scans were done before I created the Gallery). I even enjoy seeing how long it's been since the albums were created vs how long ago they were updated. Just last month I scanned a card for a very obscure NBA team...I hadn't updated the album since it was created, and it was the second oldest album without an update. I have only two cards for the team and I don't believe there are any more out there to get, maybe a parallel of the one I just posted but I'm not sure. 

Another nice thing too is that cards of all sizes just sort right in. I have the site set up to automatically put everything in order based on the image title, so now cards that can't be sorted with standard size cards (tallboys, box toppers, etc) just go right in where they belong.

There are some things I enjoy less now with the scanning project too. Chrome cards I used to love, not so much now. Mirror foil cards I used to not really like because they hurt my eyes if the light hit them the wrong way. Now I actively loathe them. Still, the end result is worth doing. 

Honestly...I think I like the documentation part more than the actual collecting part. 

I'm with V3 in that I see no point in collecting if you cannot enjoy them. I also have them displayed all over my home office. This is my latest addition where I keep some team or smaller sets across various sports on display.

Good topic.

I look at some cards on a regular basis as I just sort and add but I also have some cards that I haven't looked at in years. This reminds me that I had a focus project I wanted to work on this winter that I never got anywhere with. I intended to create a few albums and I still want to do this. My plan was to create an album of Brewers sets for the 70's, 80's and 90's (probably by major brand for the 80's and 90's. I think those would be nice albums to have on the shelf to pull down and flip through from time to time.