"Player Collectors" How do you organize? Beckett checklist?

I've been very active building my Albert Belle collection and am approaching 75% of his outstanding cards (as of beckett.com's checklist). I've been giving some thought to my collection, how I organize & track it, the beckett checklist, etc.

I thought I'd start a thread in regards to two areas of interest. (1) How do other "player/super collectors" organize their player collections? (2) Do use beckett.com's player checklists and/or how to do you track your collection?

I'll be the first to post that I organize mine in binders by set and then year. I've changed this many times as my collection went from 30% to 50% to 60%, etc. I have 4 binders at this point and am starting to think of other ways to organize the cards.

As far as beckett.com's checklists, it is all I'm really knowledgable of for tracking the outstanding Albert Belle cards. I'm still a little confused though because I have Belle cards not included on the list and I have found some errors on the list and when I contact beckett, they just simply ignored me. Anyone else have this problem? Also, they show 2,108 Belle cards but when I drop the list into excel there are only 2,107 LOL.

Just thought I'd get a thread going to see if I can learn a little something from other super/player collectors, as I'm rethinking how to organize my collection and also how to track the cards I have.

I went through beckett and made a checklist by year and brand for Utley in an excel sheet. Column for card number, then description, than a column for a check mark if I receive one in. Took about 20 hours :lol:

It's made it everything a lot easier and a lot more fun. I love looking through it to see my holes. And since it's all built, adding to the 2010 as they come out is always fun.

Excel is the only way to go in my mind. I have a spreadsheet for the cards that I have, the cards that I've bought, and specific sets that contain a million variations (2005 Absolute Memorabilia).

Becket is a good starting point---put the cards that they have listed into excel, and then add/subtract/correct at will. Beckett has the most complete lists that are easily accessible, but that does not mean that they are perfect. For example, for Jonny Gomes these three cards are listed:

2006 Bowman Originals Buyback Autographs #506 Jonny Gomes 06 B/ 363 F
2006 Bowman Originals Buyback Autographs #505 Jonny Gomes 06 B/ 14 F
2006 Bowman Originals Buyback Autographs #504 Jonny Gomes 06 B/ 1 F

So what the hell does that mean? The regular card (2006 Bowman buyback) is /363, but there are none /14 or /1. However, BowmanChromeAddict was sent the checklist from Topps, as he provided some of the cards for buybacks. On it, those cards are listed like this:

Jonny Gomes 06 B/ 348 RLS
Jonny Gomes 06 B/ 14 D/RLS
Jonny Gomes 06 B/ 1 RLS

348+14+1=363, so it appears that the erroneous /14 and /1 were just cards that were not released or released differently. I also have two error cards numbered /366; perhaps they were supposed to be included among the 14 that were not to be released.

Anyways, the moral of that story is that while Becket has three cards listed, only one of which exists, my list has two cards, both of which do (not to mention all the other cards of Gomes that Beckett doesn't list). For other players, whole sets of hundreds of cards (Moments & Milestones and Topps Tek) are listed as one card. In lieu of Becket's "My Organize", I simply make the text of each card that I have bold, and have a sheet that keeps track of various stats. At this point, I hardly use Becket at all, and I would recommend moving away from it; going it alone gives you a lot more autonomy, and means that you can painlessly implement that changes that you need to make.



As to organising the physical collection itself: each card is in a sleeve and loploader, and then those are all in a box. A second collection is in a binder, and due to space and display considerations I may follow suit with the primary one.

Lancemountain said:

I went through beckett and made a checklist by year and brand for Utley in an excel sheet. Column for card number, then description, than a column for a check mark if I receive one in. Took about 20 hours :lol:

It's made it everything a lot easier and a lot more fun. I love looking through it to see my holes. And since it's all built, adding to the 2010 as they come out is always fun.

Click to expand...

I just did the same this week. I have almost all the cards on the checklist now after having a bunch of problems (I think I only need to add 20 cards to the list). I still need to check off all the cards I have as I have only done it for the autographs. Hopefully, I can figure out some way to make it load faster.
Anyways here is the checklist I made for my site:
http://www.zambrano38.com/Page.htm

In terms of actual organization, I bought one-touches for all my Z's except base this year. I have the base organized by year in boxes.

Lancemountain said:

I went through beckett and made a checklist by year and brand for Utley in an excel sheet. Column for card number, then description, than a column for a check mark if I receive one in. Took about 20 hours :lol:

It's made it everything a lot easier and a lot more fun. I love looking through it to see my holes. And since it's all built, adding to the 2010 as they come out is always fun.

Click to expand...

I did the same thing when I started with my Denard Span collection. With what he had in TTT and Topps Chrome he just recently broke 300. Not as much as other players but it is getting to be a little tougher now to find stuff since it is mostly parallels and I don't feel like paying $4 on ebay for a card that is only $0.50.

Excel is the only way to go when you're dealing with a player that has more than about 500 cards. I've combined checklists from Beckett, SCD, various Krause publication, etc... I used to store mine in binders but it got too difficult moving cards around with new additions. The best way I have found is to just use top loaders with penny sleeves; you'll drop $100 or more in supplies but it is great for organizing. I've found that binders will damage cards over time even if you lay them flat.

Take it from someone who has changed from binders to boxes and back again in the last 25 years, top loaders are the way to go.

I used to follow beckett's checklist...that is until they decided to screw everything up with the new site. For some reason I can no longer log in over there. I've never done anything to get banned...but it just won't let me in. Oh well. I've since created my own checklist. As far as physical collection, I'm from the school of penny sleeves and toploaders. I store those in monster boxes. Carrying around 4 monster boxes full of cards in toploaders is pretty heavy, but well worth it in my opinion.

Google docs. I use a spreadsheet there.

Lancemountain said:

I went through beckett and made a checklist by year and brand for Utley in an excel sheet. Column for card number, then description, than a column for a check mark if I receive one in. Took about 20 hours :lol:

It's made it everything a lot easier and a lot more fun. I love looking through it to see my holes. And since it's all built, adding to the 2010 as they come out is always fun.

Click to expand...

save the check mark, this is exactly what I've done for Rollins and will do for Zobrist in the near future. And it took me about 3-4 days/2-3 hours a day to do Rollins. Zobrist I could probably do in one day but I have just procrastinated and have been really focused on Rollins lately.

Since I do not go after g/u, autos, or 1/1's (unless its too cheap to pass up), I've thought about going the binder, 9-page-route as well. probably 2 or 3 years for each binder.

I also copied everything from beckett's checklist but have no problems collecting an oddball item if it appeals to me or it is cheap.