Neatness counts

 

Today would have been my mom's 84th birthday if she hadn't left us five years ago now.

My mom was vigilant when it came to neatness. It was a big deal. Then God laughed and gave her three boys. She waged a mission against messiness daily, but it was often a losing battle. 

Out of the three of us, I inherited the neatness gene. But it still wasn't good enough. Before I had my card room, I'd often sort cards in the living room and when my parents came to visit, there would be stacks of cards around the house. My mom would say to my wife, "they're right in the living room," as if only certain things were allowed in the living room.

 

She'd be pretty pleased with the card room now. I admit I am, too. I gravitate toward items that make the hobby neater, although my mom probably would be happier with a collector who had just 10 items in their collection and a tiny little display.

One of those neatness tools is binder pages. I love how binders and pages turn your collection into a hobby library. The binders in my collection are like shelves in a library, pull out a binder like it's a big ol' book and start reading.

Pages get a bad rap as a "boring" hobby purchase. I've said it myself right here. But damn did I need pages this Christmas, and I got some, and I was really really stoked about it. Because I had so many stalled projects waiting for pages.

Such as:

 

Extending my collection of Dodgers cards into a 37th binder. This page here is currently the last page in the binder and it did not fit in my 36th binder. It's floated around without a home for too long but now it has one.

This is my 1970s Hostess binder. I picked the 1.5-inch size because I thought it'd be a modest binder for a modest collection.

 

 

 

Since that time, I've completed two Hostess sets (1976 and 1977) and am more than halfway through a third (1975). Add what I have for 1978 and 1979 plus all the panels I decided to collect, too, and it's overloaded. New pages allow me to extend this into a second small binder but I still need to think on how to do this.

The generous selection of 1978 and 1983 OPC cards that Angus gave me in October have been sitting in stacks ever since, waiting for pages.

Because of this I've kept the door to the card room closed, thanks to the cat, who likes to do things like leap onto tables full of cards and knock them over. But she can't knock binders over! So let's get those into pages and binders!

 

 

During the page shortage period I raided a couple of oddball binders for pages and mini sets like these have been spending time on that card table, out in the open and vulnerable to cats and other things (i.e. clumsy me). 

They can now go back inside binders where they previously lived.

I also can now dedicate this stack of 2024 Chrome Tennis to its own binder, just like the 2021 version. I love that 2021 tennis binder, so classy and neat in its black cover.

Also binders are great for underlining what you still need to complete a set. You can't do that stashing it in a box. The 2024 set is a few cards short of finished and leaving blank spots will eventually get me off my butt to finish the rest of it. Just open the binder and the set-completing story is inside!

 

 

I also found a larger binder for my 2005 Topps set plus the Update set thanks to the pages I received. Still lots of work to do on that set but there's a spot for every future card now.

So that's six projects that are now safely in binders thanks to the pages I received for Christmas. Everything is lined up nice and relatively neat. I think mom would approve, though she would likely mention how many cards I have, and not in the good way.