Hard-core team collectors, of which I am one, know all about duplicates. It is a necessary side-effect of collecting your team.
The question is: what do you do with those duplicates?
For me, most of the duplicate Dodgers go in the Big Box of Dupes. If I can't dedicate the cards to some other completion quest, a set, the night card binder, whatever, they're stashed in the BB of D. The dupes box comes in handy when I'm trading with a fellow Dodger fan. But otherwise, they sit and wait for me to come up with some genius plan, like making a table out of them.
Other duplicates, as mentioned above, will go toward a set I am half-heartedly collecting, such as 2016 Heritage.
And then there are the doubles that make it across the duplicate dividing line.
Maybe you have such a line yourselves. For me, that line is 1977.
Any Dodger duplicate from 1977 or earlier still gets featured in my Dodgers binders. Those duplicates are just too rare or fun to be stashed in a box, and it actually gives me a thrill to page through a team binder and see doubles of some card from 1960.
That's good stuff.
I chose 1977 as the line of demarcation because in the process of obtaining cards over the years, duplicates seemed to ramp up around 1978 (perhaps it is no coincidence as that's the first year I heard of "double-printing" certain cards in the set). There really isn't any noticeable difference between a card from 1977 and 1978 in any other way, other than '78s being more plentiful. And after that, it's a free-for-all. Virtually any Dodger card from the '80s, man -- you want it? I've got it. Several times.
So, for example, I received a package from Commishbob of The Five Tool Collector recently. These cards he sent me are dupes:
Pretty fancy of me to have dupes of 1950s cards, huh? Yeah, I've been doing this for awhile.
However, 1955 Bowman and 1958 Topps are far above the duplicate dividing line, so they will both appear in the Dodger binders. Each card is also an upgrade, and that is the ideal situation for a duplicate. I think that's a duplicate's true calling: Being an upgrade.
So I'm very happy to add those duplicates to my collection.
Bob also sent some other cards that most certainly are not dupes.
A couple of 2016 Archives Dodger needs. I wish just once Topps would use a photo of Sutton that isn't from the 1960s/early '70s. I don't know this Sutton. I want Sutton with his '70s perm!
Three 1956 Topps off the want list. I sense that you will see 1 or 2 of these very soon on the 1956 of the Month series because I have stories to tell already about two of them.
Finally, a couple of 1964 Topps coins! These will go nicely with the Willie Davis one I own already. (Willie somehow managed to escape the rust problem that most of these have, perhaps because Willie was always the star).
I'm tempted to throw these coins in my pocket with the rest of my change and listen to them clinking around.
I guess that's something else you can do with your duplicates: throw them in your front pocket. In fact, I recommend that collectors always have a card in their pocket that they can produce in an emergency. It's a little more devil-may-care than "wallet card," too.
I'm going to use this card from the same package as my "pocket card." There are even uses for Panini Donruss duplicates.
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