General Forum

How do you guys organize your cards? By player or sets. I'm having a hard time organizing lol

All the ways.

1 collection for current players - in order by year and set

2 collection for retired players - in order by player

3 collection for team sets

4 collection for full sets

Wall of text in coming. I do mine mostly in chronological order. For example, my Topps base binders begin in 1968 and each card is in numerical order in the sheets with gaps for any cards I don't have or purposely kept out. Any inserts or parallels are at the end of the base/update set but not in any particular order. If I have enough or all of the cards in any insert or parallel set I will also put them in the correct order with gaps for the missing cards. Using 2" binders it works out to Binder 1 goes '68-'79, Binder 2 goes '80-'89, Binder 3 goes '90-'99, Binder 4 goes '00-'09, Binder 5 goes '10-'16 and Binder 6 goes '17-'22. Tellingly there are way more inserts and parallels in the more recent years so the every decade system breaks down, so it looks like I'll change it to '10-'14, '15-'19 and '20-'24 when the time comes. I keep the more expensive/rarer cards outside the binders in toploaders or cardsavers in seperate boxes. The older cards are again kept chronologically and by brand in their box. One section each for Topps, Bowman, miscellaneous and oddities. Auto cards and memorabilia cards are each kept in their own boxes with no organization whatsoever. I have no plan yet what I'll do with those. I keep a seperate 3" binder for Topps Heritage cards with the same system. Allen & Ginter has its own 2" and includes the mini cards in tobacco card sheets. Gypsy Queen, 206/205, National Chicle and Cracker Jack fit into another 2" binder. Tried to keep the tobacco/old-school issues together. Stadium Club and Finest are together in a 2" binder. Chrome, Archives and modern Bowman fit into another 2" binder. All discs, postcards, posters etc. are in their own binder of odd-sized cards along with any hand cut cards. Finally, all of Donruss in one 3" binder, Fleer/Ultra and Score in a 3" binder together. I have room for maybe 4 more binders in my current set up and that will be as far as I take it. Writing all this down really let me appreciate how in over my head I am with what I have and the space I have to keep it. So unfortunately Upper Deck, Leaf, Pinnacle, Zenith etc. will stay in boxes for the forseeable future. TL;DR chronologically in binders.

Hmm I like your idea

I do a bit of both. My STL Cardinals collection is mostly sorted by year/brand/card number. But I also have 16 specific players that are separate from the rest of the Cardinals collection. Those 16 players are still sorted in the same order, but not in the albums with the "common" Cardinals cards. I have my entire Cardinals collection in albums with 6 of the 13 albums being for specific players. I also keep all of my other STL AU and MEM cards at the front of one of the player albums. Albums range in size from 2 inches to 4 inches thick.

Since I collect mostly 49er and cowboy football cards, I have binders for quarterbacks , runnigbacks, wide recievers, and so on. I also have a separate team set book. I buy and trade for duplicates of each card also.

I only sort the scans by team, not the physical cards, but they are sorted in chronological order by set. https://public.fotki.com/CardboardHistory/hockey/hockey-by-team/

I very recently sorted my entire collection by sport and then alphabetically by last name. I used to have is sorted by sport, then year, then set, then team, then position, then player by stats. I still sort my most recent cards by that method and keep them in binders, but too complex for my entire collection. 

Im really torn currently about leaving parallels toploaded, or put into binder.  I use the zip up fancy side load binders (most commonly used with TCG products).  Does anyone here have any extra input on that. 

All great ideas. I have my Mets collection broken down into binders. Topps, Bowman, Panini, Donruss etc by year. The Topps parallels I keep in their own binder because there are way too many. The variations stay with the set group in the team binder.  Patches, autos, etc are in a seperate box. My seperate favorite Met players are in their own binder or box. Some of the above ideas I will be stealing for my own way of collecting. Thanks group!