General Forum

Perhaps I have missed a discussion in the past, but what are preferences for storing cards? I currently have all of mine in pages in three-ring binders. Is this safe, or would I be better off to convert everything to penny sleeves, and top loaders in boxes?

I just started moving my completed (or working on completing) sets into binders.  I love being able to look through them easily, seeing them all together like a little family.  I'm sure it's not as "safe" as putting them into boxes, but I wasn't getting enjoyment out of them that way.

I had to come up with math to make my OCD work: so any set from 1980 and earlier that I'm at 50%+ completion, I put into its own binder leaving spaces for cards I'm missing.  For any set after 1980, I'm doing the same but with 75%+ completion and only if I like the set.  My 1995 Fleer collection will never see the light of day!

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I do a mix of things.  For more of my high end stuff and personal stuff I really like it is penny sleeve and top loader.  I also use binder books.  I have a few complete sets in binders and also some themed binders.  an example of a theme binder would be an all Pittsburgh binder where there are only Penguins, Pirates and Steelers and another example is a Women of Sport binder I put together which athletes from a variety of sport.

I also have a great number of cards stored raw in boxes.  Some of these boxes are team specific boxes which once in awhile I shall throw one out on ebay.

Card storage - probably the thing I think about the most in the hobby that makes me slightly not enjoy it.  It really depends on how big your collection is, and also what you are planning to do with your cards.  If you are collecting with an intent to sell the cards and make money, then it is probably better to have them in sleeves and toploaders in a box.  If you collect cards to actually collect instead of invest, then you can pretty much store the cards however you prefer. 

Pages and binders makes for easy viewing, but that can take up a lot of space and cost a lot of money.  There are differing opinions about how safe cards are in pages, but many say that if you use high quality pages like Ultra Pro Platinum and D ring binders then you should be okay.  Personally I would love to have cards in binders to look through, but I don't have the time or the money to move everything to binders right now.  Maybe one day I will have some of my favorite cards in binders.

Penny Sleeves and toploaders can be a good compromise of protecting your cards and still being accessible enough to look through.

I don't collect to invest and I have never sold a card, so the protection part for me is more so protecting the card I have for myself rather than worrying about future value.  I actually don't use anything other than BCW carboard boxes to store my cards.  I don't use sleeves or toploaders or pages.  I have my collection held in multiple 3200 count boxes.  This works for me since it takes the least amount of space and costs the least amount of money.

I will say though that looking through my cards can be difficult, and I need to figure out a way to make it easier to enjoy my collection.  I am thinking about creating some sort of hierarchy for my cards to move them into smaller collections.  But I have been thinking about this for years, and I find I just don't have the time to do a big project like that.  And also I think about what I will do when I get new cards.  It is already hard enough to move cards around to put older cards where they need to go, and that would be much more difficult if I have multiple smaller boxes or if the cards are in pages.

I think maybe I have come up with a 3 tiered system I might eventually do.  I am thinking about moving all my cards of my favorite teams, all star players, and hall of famers into smaller single row boxes.  And then eventually moving my favorite teams, hall of famers, rookie cards of all stars/hall of famers, and inserts of all stars/hall of famers to pages and binders.  So then I will have non stars in the 3200 count boxes, stars in the single row boxes, and my showcase cards in pages.  But I collect NBA and MLB cards.  I think this is great for NBA, but there are so many more all stars in MLB that I still am not sure about the whole thing.  And on top of that the baseball hall of fame has not elected Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez etc, for various reasons so it always feels silly thinking nope A Rod and Bonds don't go with the rest of the legends.  I grew up watching baseball in the 90s and early 2000s so my childhood memories are filled with watching the steroid era guys.  So not adding them doesn't feel right, but then that means my system is broken.  Not to mention when it comes to all stars, some guys have never made an all star appearance but have had much better careers than other players who can be considered all stars because they either had one good year, or were a questionable selection to begin with.  

I am writing a novel, but to summarize it really comes down to what works for you.  Toploaders and sleeves will probably give you better protection than binders and pages, but you will probably enjoy your cards more leaving them in the pages.  

Hopefully some of this helped, but the reality is that I myself am never really sure what to do with my own storage.  And in the end for me it all comes down to time and money and my cards will probably remain in the 3200 count boxes for a long time.  And also I can never come up with a system I am satisfied with enough to actually make the change.  

Thanks everyone for the insights! Happy holidays to you all!

Nearly everything in binders for me. When I start to do sets for baseball, I will put completed sets in a box. The only cards in my PC that i have in boxes now are 1 box to hold graded cards, and another to hold cards in one-touch. They are mainly cards in screw-down as I have pages that can hold thick cards with exception to really thick ones like Topps Strata. Screw-downs I'm too lazy to take the screw out, also booklet cards go in there because there isn't a page solution available for them.

I started with everything in binders. That takes up quite a bit of real estate in the basement though, so last year I went through all my cards, organized them in order of set on this site and anything that Beckett had at a buck or more went in to either a toploader or penny sleeve. There are long boxes especially for toploaders so I have 4 of those. Just started a 7th 4-row monster box for penny sleeves. Still have a ton of binders though...110 or so.

When I move in the next year or two the house we get must have a good card collection area. I find the Billy bookcases from IKEA..the small ones....can fit 12 binders quite nicely.

If you are storing them for long periods, consider wrapping the binders in plastic and/or bubble wrap. As far as I can tell, two of the main things to be concerned about in protecting cards long term are exposure to air/oxygen over time (oxidation?) and any movement. I think binders can actually be better than boxes because with boxes you have to have it filled or stuffed with the right amount of cards to fit just right, otherwise the cards will end up moving to some degree whether flipping through them, moving the box, or what not. There are little things that can be done to fill up the open spaces, but I think you will find it is more tedious and annoying than you might expect -- at least I have found that I am always adding or taking out cards from a box for some reason, organizing, and there rarely is a time where I have a box that is complete and done and everything fits just right. Anyway, with binders you can pretty much have any amount of cards in them, taking out or adding pages or cards, and you don't have to worry about them being damaged when you have a binder that is not filled up, and so long as you aren't flipping through the pages like a madman you should be good.

I also found a method I like with toploaders by happenstance. Its always kind of bugged me that toploaders are exposed at the top and one answer is to put them in team bags. I was looking for team bags at a store that did mostly comics, and all they had were those bags to store comics. I went with it and I can put a number of toploaders in that bag and then fold them and use some painters tape to seal and keep them together better, so that it is more or less just toploaders stacked together as one and you get the added strength and stability of the toploaders being joined together (you can stand it up on its own) and a seal to protect from air. I put 8 in each comic bag and arrange it in a way so they are same direction after folding andI can see the front of each card when I unfold it. I like this method quite a lot.

In my opinion, storage is the most important thing in collecting, even more important than acquiring the actual cards. Its part of the challenge to limit the amount of extra storage materials you have to buy because it adds up.

Combination of binders, boxes, and random stacks. My desk is so messy with things that need to put away and catalogued. I recently built a custom cabinet to store it all, but I don't have a website I can post pics from. I'll put some on my Twitter, link through my profile.