30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Xmas Break Cleaning = Vintage Binder

I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to do something about the mess on my office desk. It has been cluttered for nearly two months as cards have slowly accumulated into mounds. So, last night... I decided to do something about it.

Unfortunately... I'm not finished yet (hopefully, I can wrap things up by this evening), but one of the things I managed to do was build my vintage card binder:


Simply put... it's a binder for all of my vintage cards that aren't high-end, but at the same time hold some sort of value (either sentimental or collector value) to me.


I debated on whether or not to organize it alphabetically or chronologically... and in the end I chose the latter. After that, I had to decide on a cutoff year.

At first, I went with 1979... since anything pre-80's is what I consider to be vintage. But then I realized... there are just too many cool cards in the 80's to leave out.


In the end, I decided to make 1986 the cutoff year for baseball... since 1987 was the first year I started to buy cards in "bulk".


As for football, basketball, and hockey... I extended it to 1989... seeing that I didn't start collecting those sports until the early 90's.


I'm pretty happy with the results, because it reduces clutter and gives me a place to put my lower end vintage cards.


Plus it fits perfectly on my shelf between my 90's Basketball Inserts PC binder & my Tony Gwynn PC binder.


Up next: Sorting through Top Loaders & Card Savers... and determining which ones are worth keeping... and which are headed to the dumpster.

Today's question is...

What do you do with the Top Loaders/Card Savers that are no longer pleasing to the eye (ie: have tape or price tags, are yellowing, etc.)?

I've saved a bunch of these over the past few years and have also acquired some in my Craigslist hauls, but they are taking up too much space. Usually, I reuse them as shipping supplies, but do I really need all of these? Probably not. Any suggestions outside of dumping them, would be appreciated.

Happy Hump Day & Sayonara!

13 comments:

Paul Hadsall said...

Top loaders that are covered in scotch tape or have turned yellow go straight into the trash as soon as I take the card out to put it in something better (either a binder or a nicer card holder.)

I should probably thin out the rest that have been accumulating, though.

I'd like to recycle them, but our recycling program doesn't take any un-marked items.

moremonkeys138 said...

Top loaders make a great protector for shipping cards through the mail. I take a team bag, place the cards in the bag and put a top loader on each the front and back and tape them up. Good for helping in protecting the cards from the post office to ensure damage free delivery.

Spiegel83 said...

I use my beat up top loaders for shipping purposes. I also started mailing cards for TTM autos and beat up top loaders are perfect for this.

hiflew said...

I also use the scotch tape or ugly top loaders with trades. They work really well for a small trade of 4 or less cards which can be shipped in a PWE. I put the cards in then tape them together and put them inside my folded up trade note. It works great, the cards are safe, and the shipping is very minimal.

Ryan G said...

Using them for shipping is my usual answer. However, I get way too many and plenty end up in the trash/recycling. In fact, I'm filling a garbage bag here in Georgia with them.

Fuji said...

Thanks for the feedback guys... some members over at CCW gave me a couple of ideas... one of them is to give them to kids who would use them.

Another idea was to fill them will cards and donate them to Goodwill as a tax deduction.

I've been racking my brain trying to figure out a way to use these as a "teaching tool", but haven't found a way as of yet.

Dawgbones said...

Teaching tool - fling them at the people who fall asleep in your class to wake them up!!

Fuji said...

dawgbones - lol... i'll try to keep that in mind when i get back into the classroom on tuesday.

Play at the Plate said...

I use them in trade packages as well. I'm pretty sure I've mailed and received the same top loaders a number of times. I try to use the blue painters tape that doesn't leave a residue on the toploaders, but some of the recycled ones aren't good for anything else.

Offy said...

I'm not sure if I ever knew that you collected Tony Gwynn. I've traded some Gywnns to Community Gum, but I still have some cool ones available including a new card that I'm now willing to trade because I picked up the Mike Piazza version of the card on COMC.

I still have the stack of cards for you, but there's one problem. Since we started the trade, Delonte West went from a returning member of the Boston Celtics to a new member of the Dallas Mavericks. So, I'm not really looking to pick up that card anymore. I'd still be interested in some of the wrestling autos and anything else you have that I collect.

As far as the crappy toploaders go, I keep them around for shipping packages out. I prefer the dummy inserts, but I run out of those quickly especially with the amount of items that I've been selling on eBay lately.

Fuji said...

play at the plate - yeah, i ran out of blue painters tape, but it works great

offy - i have a binder with close to 1,000 different gwynns.

but, i pretty much only trade for his relic cards, since most of his inserts and base are super cheap on ebay. every now and then, i'll pick up a huge lot of gwynns for about 2 to 5 cents a piece.

Offy said...

I used to do the same thing with Piazza, but recently there haven't been many good lots to be found on eBay. Instead, I'll just go to SportLots and grab a bunch for .18¢ a piece. It's a little more per card, but at least I know that I'll end up needing everything that I get.

The Gwynn card that I was hinting at is the 1997 Donruss Preferred X-Ponential Power insert. I loved the design so much that I kept it in my collection, but now that I have the Piazza, I may finally end up trading the Gwynn. I did the same thing with 1995 Leaf Gold Star. I had the Puckett and loved the design, but after trading it to Rhubarb Runner, I went out and picked up the Piazza.

Fuji said...

offy - i dabble on sportlots from time to time too. oh... just saw the insert on COMC... those are cool looking. i'd be interested in trading for it.