Thursday, February 23, 2012

Finally Organized

A while back I had this great idea to take care of my collection.  I would find an old library card catalog and organize my cards (in dewey decimal order of course).  Some people thought me crazy... but I knew what I was doing. 

This past summer my wife and I bought our first home together and with it came a partially finished basement with wood paneled walls and orange carpet.  I swear to you that when I stepped in to that room the walls screamed out my name as if they had been waiting there whole crazy wall lives for me to arrive.  This would be my "Man Cave" and finally I had a place to properly display everything I've been collecting since the age of 8.  Thats 19 years of junk people and thats a lot of junk. 

Since I finally had a place to house my collection it was time to get serious about getting it all organized.  I had told my in-laws about this idea to organize my cards in a library card catalog in some random conversation when I first thought about it and my mother-in-law happens to be the kind of lady who remembers these random conversations!

Through her work she met a gentleman who worked for the Oxford Library and she had told him about my need and he told her she could take one for a donation to the Library.  He didn't put a price on it and i'm not sure how much they decided to contribute but before I knew it they were pulling up in front of our new home with a giant card catalog in the back of there pick up. 


It was a sight of beauty and was the proper motivation I needed to get it all organized.  The task was monumental... 1000's and 1000's of cards mixed together in such a manor that I literally had to look at every single card I own.  I realized I have a lot of junk and a lot of duplicates.  I basically organized everything by company and year and my next job is to inventory each drawer individually, put them in numeric order, and remove any duplicates. 

Check out the final product...

This particular drawer is dedicated to relic cards

 and next to that is the autograph drawer

examples of how the drawers are organized for now with post it dividers from set to set or year to year.

For now all of the drawers are labeled hand written on loose paper, but my awesome wife got me a label maker to properly label each drawer.

Even sweeter then all of that is the fact that my wife lost a bet to me in the AFC playoffs and now has to label them for me... not sure what I'd do with out her!

Once the Cave is completely finished I'll post pictures of the final product.  We're still a couple months away.

Untill next time...

1 comment:

  1. I too keep my cards in a library card file. I label each of my drawers with a card that represents what's in that drawer. It looks pretty cool and it makes duplicate cards useful.

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