The Collection Reorganization Struggle Continues…
As I mentioned last month, I have been reorganizing my hockey card collection. One task that has thrown me for a bit of a loop is what to do with “small sets” that don’t fill up an entire three-ring binder.
Sets that have hundreds of cards are easy to figure out. If the set is around 500 cards, it takes up a 2-inch binder. If it is around 100-300 cards, you can usually fit two or three sets in the same 2-inch binder. And if the set is much bigger – say 700 to 800 cards – it will use a 3-inch album.
But what about sets like 1976-77 Popsicle (18 cards), 1988-89 Esso All-Stars (48 cards), 1994-95 Stadium Club Members Only (50 cards), 2001-02 Waving the Flag (33 cards), or 2008-009 Biography of a Season (30 cards)? I don’t have an obvious way of storing these types of sets.
For example, I have a bunch of 2001-02 sets in one 2-inch binder, including Waving the Flag. And I put 1988-89 Esso in the same binder as my 1988-89 Toppss and O-Pee-Chee sets.
Then I have a bunch of random, small-sized and/or oddball sets in a 3-inch album, uninspiringly labeled as “Small Sets” on the spine, but not really clueing me in as to which sets it was storing. And then countless other sets stuffed here and there, wherever I could find a binder that could fit an extra three to ten pages.
The problem is a lot of these sets that take up only two or three pages get lost in the shuffle. Sometimes, I am good about keeping them with a bigger set from the same year – i.e. 2020-21 Star Rookies and 2021 National Hockey Card Day in the same album as a larger set like 2020-21 Skybox Metal Universe.
Other times, I file cards into an album with another set that gets put on the shelf and eventually forgotten about.
So, what I think I am going to do is put a bunch of similar small sets together in one album, such as all National Hockey Card Day sets in one binder and all Star Rookie / Rookie Class sets in another binder. I’ll do the same with my Upper Deck McDonalds sets and my AHL All-Star sets that were released by Choice Marketing (remember those?).
The rest of the sets I will put in larger albums organized by decade. I’ll probably end up needing two albums for the 1990s, since so many small, food-issue or other oddball sets were released back then.
How do you organize your smaller sets in albums/binder? Leave a comment, or hit me up on social media, and let me know.
Note: This article is an updated version of an editorial that originally appeared in Volume 4 – Issue 5 of the Puck Junk Newsletter. For stories like these, plus news and updates about hockey cards and collectibles, subscribe to the newsletter here.
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