Blog Bat Around: What I collect

Night Owl made a Blog Bat Around post the other day about things he collects. He had some cool parts to his collection. Mine is a little different than his, but our secondary areas are pretty similar. Here it goes.

1. Favorite Players

I have about 3 binders full of my favorite players. There are too many guys to list, and I don't want to bore you with a ton of pictures, but feel free to check out the link and the individual posts/pictures of each player. This area of my collection takes the #1 priority. If I get cards online, I try to get guys I collect to add to this binder, and if I pull a card from a pack that could fit in another area of my collection, I will add it to my Favorite Player Binder first, then if I get a double of it, then it goes either in a lower category, if applicable, if not, then it goes in a team binder.

2. Tigers/Devil Rays/Rays

I love to try to get cards of Detroit and Tampa Bay players from any year. Pretty simple.

3. Season/World Series Highlight cards

Here is where I took some pictures so you can get a feel of my different binders. I feel that Season/World Series Highlight cards capture the rare moments when athletes are at the top of their game. Also thrown in this album are historic moment cards, such as the Gold Rush, Woodstock, random wars ending, and such. Here are some pictures.

I have these in order by date. If I have cards from different brands of the same moment, it goes by earliest year and alphabetically by brand. For some moments that didn't get cards (like Barry Bonds' 100th HR (in the center of the left page on the last photo), I have made customs for them.

4. Famous Rookie Cards

This binder includes anything from a Shawn Abner '85 Topps rookie to a '89 Upper Deck Ken Griffey, Jr. Basically cards that were on Beckett's Hot List, or ones that I remember being big when they came out. Many of them don't hold their value now, but some of them do. Here is a sampling.

I forgot to mention that I like getting cards signed, and if they are signed, I add them to whichever binder they would normally go in.

5. Relics/Shiny cards/Cards that have meaning to me/Refractors

The final albums are kind of a hodgepodge of what I like about cards. I like to double stuff my cards in the 9-pocket pages so there are 18 in each, so this pairing of cards kind of came out of necessity. Relic cards don't fit in pages as it is, and if you try to put them back to back, it's impossible. To solve this problem, I put my cards with meaning/shiny cards on the reverse side. My relics only take up maybe 10 pages, so after the relics are gone, then the rest of the meaningful/shiny cards fill up the majority of the binder. The final part of it has refractors by year. Here are some pictures from that album.

I could go on for days on why some of the cards mean so much to me with stories about when I pulled them or who I traded with to get the card, or games I went to and got the card signed. This album is a nice way to relive some great times. Plus, the Refractors are fun to look at. Love the sparkly!!

So that sums up my unique binders and what I collect. All the rest of the 50 or so binders are dedicated to each team. I don't know if I am different from most collectors or not, but I find it comforting that I share the same kind of priority in their collection of guys like Night Owl who have their favorite teams as the 2nd or 3rd level of their collection. Collect what you like, and like what you collect. I think I have done that with my 5 kinds of things I collect and each binder.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy