General Forum

I know the organization of cards in binders has been covered in other threads, and I read through several while researching this topic. I wanted to share my own experience in organizing my binders here. Over my break from trading, I've been pulling some of my completed vintage sets out of boxes and placing them in binders and, I have to say, what a rewarding feeling that is! I insert them so that there are two cards back-to-back in each pocket with only the fronts showing. I initially was placing them in numerical order, however I didn't like the randomness of the cards as I flipped through the binder. I felt there was no consistency to the order. With the cards being back-to-back, the numbers weren't showing anyway, so I thought it was odd to follow that order. Changing from numerical order to something else is a huge step for me because I'm all about organization. Breaking a complete numbered set apart so it's not in order was something to get over.

I decided to pull all of the cards back out binder pages and rearranged them by teams. It was a good feeling to dig into each set and look at every card and place each player into the pile with their teammates. Much more rewarding than looking at only the number on the back of the card and placing it straight into the binder. Overall, the organization looks like this:

• World Series and playoffs cards: I figured since the set is a review of the previous season, it'd be good to start with these. Kind of like closing out the previous season.
• All-Star cards: I arranged these by position number: Pitcher (1), Catcher (2), 1st Base (3), 2nd Base (4), 3rd Base (5), Shortstop (6), and then Outfielders (7, 8, and 9). American League, then National League.
• Any oddball, highlight, league leader cards. Hard to place these within teams since some have multiple players from different teams on them.
• Teams in alphabetical order: Each team starts with the team photo card, then arranged by position number: Pitcher (1), Catcher (2), 1st Base (3), 2nd Base (4), 3rd Base (5), Shortstop (6), and then Outfielders (7, 8, and 9). Players at each position are in alphabetical order. Each team is closed out with the manager and coaches cards.

I found the experience of digging into each box, looking at each card, and arranging them in an order that was unique to my collection and brought some consistency to the set was more rewarding than just looking at the number on the back of the card for binder placement. Thanks for tagging along as I shared my journey into new binder organization.