I've never actually been diagnosed by a doctor or anything... but I'm 99% sure I suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Let's check out the symptoms:
Out of the four general categories, I definitely see three of the four symptoms within my life: checking, contamination, and symmetry and ordering.
I almost always double check whether or not I've locked my car or front door. And honestly... if it weren't for the alarm company texting me whenever I set or disarm... I'd probably drive myself nuts. However this doesn't have anything to do with collecting cards... but contamination along with symmetry and ordering totally do.
How? Well one of the reasons I've enjoyed collecting for almost forty years is because it involves keeping things organized and in order. I'm also the guy who has to have all of my binders and labels match.
And when it comes to things like top loaders and penny sleeves, I only use brand new ones for my personal collection.
Luckily my buddy has a wholesale account, so I get a discount on supplies. Unfortunately... there seems to be a shortage on supplies since most are made in China. I recently reached out to the wholesaler about purchasing a case of penny sleeves, but they're completely sold out. I headed over to eBay and noticed that they're selling for almost twice as much as I normally pay.
Anyways... I thought I'd share that tidbit of information just in case you were in the market.
By the way... I totally believe in recycling my old supplies. The ones that are slightly scratched with zero tape residue are used to store stuff I eventually plan to sell or trade, while the heavily used supplies are used to ship cards in care packages. Any supplies that are deemed disgusting are typically recycled.
Speaking of care packages... I'm over halfway finished with putting together PWE's filled with cards pulled from those mystery bags.
One of these PWE's will be headed out to Jay who runs the blog, Card Hemorrhage. He sent me a package last week that contained this sweet 1976 Hostess card:
I'm not a Giants fan, but I do love 70's Hostess cards. This card is pretty mangled and feels like it might have gone through someone's wash. But that's okay, because this card is now inside of my Damaged Card PC binder.
He also sent me a nice stack of Oakland A's:
I'm slowly hoarding every and any Ramon Laureano rookie card I can get my hands on. I was also excited to see that 1991 Upper Deck Joe Slusarski. I was looking at my collection of multi-image Upper Deck cards this weekend and this card wasn't in there. Now it is.
He also sent me two new additions to my Japanese Athlete PC. Last, but not least is this nice rainbow of 70's minor league cards:
I wasn't familiar with any of these guys... but Mr. Alston had a short stint with the A's. And three of them played in the majors at some point.
Okay... gonna try and wrap up the PWE's. Brett Alan and Trevor P... if you happen to read this post, could you email me your mailing addresses? I have some stuff for you guys.
Here is today's question of the day. In regards to supplies...
Do you recycle or reuse?
Happy Monday and sayonara!
21 comments:
If I can re-use a bubble mailer I will, same goes for penny sleeves, baggies, and top loaders. If it's incredibly beat up or dirty, I'll just toss it.
Also, those are some pretty nice cards you got. I'll have to check out that new blog you mentioned as well.
I'll reuse what I can... but the rest gets recycled.
I reuse what I can though I generally replace my penny sleeves as well. Some of them (like from COMC) are good but more often than not the sleeves don't fit in the 9-pockets.
Regarding the cards here. Dave Frost is a Stanford guy. Played both basketball and baseball but had to quit after a couple seasons of basketball due recurring to knee injuries.
We are INCREDIBLY similar on this front Fuji. I use all new penny sleeves, top loaders, and if the card is nice enough to deem it Ultra Pro One Touch magnetic holders for my collection. Then to take it a step further I use very particular slim fit bags over my One Touch holders and PSA slabs to protect those cases from scratching even.
Like you, I use off-condition stuff in sales and trade packages, and really bad stuff gets recycled. Also like you, I'm fairly certain I have at least mild OCD :)
Yes, of course I recycle and reuse. I'm not made of money. The only exception is bubble envelopes just because they disappear quickly and I forget to keep the old envelopes I get in trade packages. But I'm set for life on penny sleeves. Ordering a case? I can't imagine having to do that.
Dell Alston is featured with the A's in the 1979 Topps set.
I recycle, reuse, and re-sell. I recently sold two medium flat rate boxes of old toploaders, hard cases, snap cases, and screwdown cases. I bought a bunch of one touch cases for my hall of fame collection with the proceeds. They are the first hard cases i think i have ever purchased new, including toploaders. If anyone out there wants to get rid of card saver semi rigid sleeves send them my way. I use those to ship cards quite often and have purchased some of those in bulk in the past.
I buy and trade enough that except for the non-standard thicknesses, which you have to tailor to the cards you're storing, I've never bought top loaders. I've given away whole boxes of them to my local shop.
I'd love to distribute some of the nice D-ring binders that I recycle from work, but it's not cost-effective to ship them. I have tons.
I try to filter out scummy penny sleeves. You'll see me sifting through a pile holding them up to the light.
This is one thing that annoys me about collecting Japanese cards since I'm a bit OCD in that regard too. Since the cards from the sets I'm collecting have widely differing dimensions (some are round, some are rectangular, some are standard size, some are a bit taller, some shorter, some smaller, etc etc) I can't use a uniform set of supplies to store them all.
I love having sets in binders, but the standard pages only work for some sets, while for others I need bigger or smaller ones. Which are available, but you can't put them in the same kind of binder. So I have a whole bunch of different sized binders for different sets and the lack of uniformity is just this little nagging thing that is always in the background annoying that side of my brain.
Also, getting standard sized boxes is a bit of a pain too, especially bigger ones (like 3200 card boxes which were my preferred size when I lived back home). I've picked up some 400 and 800 card boxes here and there, but not enough so I've got like half of my collection stored in random shoe boxes, which also doesn't look good.
Sorry to rant, this is sort of therapeutic!
I do tend to re-use supplies, though we can't recycle that type of plastic here so when my top loaders get yellowed or cracked they unfortunately go into the garbage.
I am pretty OCD too when it comes to organizing my collection, but my office suffers a bit of general disarray. I love to reuse penny sleeves and top loaders for care packages...can't bear to throw any of those "old" supplies out. I also have a stack of used bubble mailers that I reuse to send cards out with.
I rarely use penny sleeves/toploaders, but when I do they're always recycled. I've never bought supplies (including bubble mailers), nor do I intend to anytime soon considering I've got a few lifetimes' worth of sleeves, toploaders, etc. scattered in my closet right now (had no idea there was a shortage on them).
Back when I did my psychology MSc, I read up on "collecting" and I think what you're describing is pretty normal for someone who collects stuff, especially wanting to set things apart eg in new penny sleeves. That's what some collectors do, in one way or another, because the point of a collection is that objects are removed from everyday use. I blogged about it (on my not baseball blog) here https://pantperthog.blogspot.com/2016/02/collecting.html?m=1
I'll use older penny sleeves for the less important cards in my collection. If I'm going to put a card In a toploader then the penny sleeve has to be flawless without any wrinkles.
I recycle and reuse, I like my budget going towards cards not supplies. I have a pretty big stash and do get rid of ones that are super stick and/or dirty.
Lot of cool cards. I did not know there was a supply shortage but it explains some things. I've looked some up from time to time and didn't know why they were tough to find.
Hey Fuji, thanks for the post of the cards I sent you.....can't believe I actually sent you a few things you didn't have. Bingo. I got lucky there. You even liked the destroyed Montefusco! (That was only because of your damaged cards section of your website).
And as far as "symmetry and ordering" - that's me to a T. I only use the new penny sleeves, and half the fun of all of this collecting is putting it into order in a box or binder - then revising and reordering it. Love it. Almost as much fun as the cards themselves.
Fuji, you make it sound like having OCD is a bad thing...
I really like those foodie minor league cards. Food issues are amongst the oddball cards that are really fun to find...Tombstone, Hostess, Post Cereals...
Actually, I drive my wife nuts, because whenever I put bills back into my wallet, they have to be all facing the same way. I also hear you on the penny sleeves. The usual card and comic shop I visit has been out of them for weeks. Fortunately, they just got a shipment in yesterday. Yeah!
adam - i re-use bubble mailers too. actually... now that i'm thinking of focusing on pwe's... i'll probably offer it up to my buddy or find a way to turn it into a project for my students
captain canuck - looks like this is the hobby norm
nick vossbrink - ooh. thanks for the info on frost. always looking to add a player into my stanford pc
shoeboxlegends - lol. i use the perfect fit sleeves too. i gave up my one touch magnetics due to lack of storage space, but i do like the way cards look inside of them.
night owl - well you know... us teachers living in the bay area are rolling in the money. lol. i just go without a meal here or there in exchange for some brand new penny sleeves. as for alston, i saw that. when i googled him, the 79t card was one of the first images to pop up
gcrl - i've given away boxes of top loaders too. i've also sold some on craigslist. actually... right now is probably a good time to list a bunch.
sean - oh man... those storage issues would drive me bonkers. i already keep an inventory of five or six types of 3x4 top loaders, as well as different pocket pages. but i'm lucky that most cards are the standard size. as for cardboard storage boxes... i also keep a variety of those on hand too. although i just ran out of 200ct. boxes. feel free to rant in my comments whenever you want. a good rant is always entertaining.
sumomenkoman - i'm hoping to clean up my office by the end of the week. i don't usually toss out a supply unless it's really nasty. but at some point i'll either need to sell the surplus or give them away. so if you ever drive up to the bay area and need some "used" supplies... i'll hook you up.
nick - i wish i had room in my closet to store excess sleeves and toploaders. i'm jealous
jongudmund - interesting read. are those your tsum tsums? i have a small collection that my friend has given me. it's been awhile, but she'd buy me one or two each month. now they're just collecting dust on a shelf. i'm going to show her your photo.
big tone - yeah... if i know a card is going into my collection it gets a new penny sleeve and a new top loader
arpsmith - i hear ya. i don't wish my issue on anyone. i wish i could just use any reasonably nice top loader... especially when i consider all of the plastic being used to make them can't be good for the planet. but that's another topic for another day.
bulldog - hopefully ultra pro start receiving their supplies from china sooner than later. otherwise... i better start conserving what i deem to be top loader-worthy
jay - that montefusco is awesome! not every damaged card gets a spot in the binder, but that one did. thanks again for the package. there's a pwe headed your way. i hope you can use some of the stuff i sent
comatoad - lol it's not the worst thing in the world to have, but if i could choose not to have some of those compulsive issues, i wouldn't. lol. i totally have my money facing one way too. glad to hear your shop received their order of penny sleeves. maybe they're starting to arrive. btw... thanks for the package. I shipped something out to you today. i probably won't open up your package until after i clean out my office though (maybe this weekend).
I reuse every supply that comes home to me except bubblers. As for real life items, I recycle as well
sport card collectors - i recycle every day items like cans, paper, and glass too.
I recycle a lot of general household items. But with card supplies, especially penny sleeves, not as much. There are only so many I can keep around. I never really seem to have quite as many toploaders as I would like, though.
yeah supplies take up a lot of space. between new and used... i've had to start storing them in the garage. except for used penny sleeves. just dumped several hundred in the trash yesterday.
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