Card room tour 2025

 

Five years ago I gave a photo tour of my then-new card room. The room made its debut in mid-2019 and by spring of 2020 it looked as I know it now.

 

I thought it'd be a good time to show another update, five years later. I've long thought of doing a video tour of my card room, but:

 

a) I am woefully inept when it comes to uploading video, etc.

b) I say all the time that I have no time for hobby videos, what makes me think anyone has time to see mine?

 

So another photo tour it is. And I'm saying right now that the photos aren't great -- too much sunlight in the room and I take the most basic pictures possible (no patience). So here we go!

 

 

The bookshelf just inside the entrance. This shelf is a holdover from my childhood bedroom, probably once painted red or blue in that usual mid-70s tribute to the Bicentennial.

 

This houses most of my boxes for Topps cards -- for sets I haven't completed or aren't attempting to complete. Near the bottom are a couple reference books and the bin contains lots of yearbooks and programs, focused on the Dodgers' postseason trips as well as some giveaway stuff. Couple magazines, too. (The hand weights are the wife's).

 

 

The top of the bookshelf. Back in 2020, I just had the Koufax and The Infield bobbleheads along with some scattered top-loader stacks of Kellogg's cards. Several other items have joined in, including the only Project 2020 cards I own and assorted knickknacks. All my Dodgers' Kellogg's cards are in the back to the right of the Koufax bobble.

 

 

The Penguin Power poster, a long ago gift from Padrographs, traveled from one side of the card room to the other a couple years ago, so it could be featured more prominently.

 

 

Way up, to the right of the Penguin Power poster is one of my multi-card frames showcasing the original 1975 Topps cards I collected in '75. These aren't anywhere near the main display I have, and it bothers me a little but I comfort myself by knowing that the '75 cards are visible almost everywhere you turn.

 

 

The first binder shelf to the left as you enter. This is an original shelving unit from my parents' house. It's quite sturdy though you can see limited dipping on the top shelf but I'm not worried.

 

This binder shelf contains most of my completed sets between 1970-1992, as well as a very near completed 1969 Topps binder. Down at the bottom are some combined sets, some complete and some not, for stuff such as Swell and Pacific Legends.

 

You can see I've run out of room and binders are stacked horizontally. I want to avoid doing that, but not sure where to allocate them.

 

 

On the top shelf are small sets and special things, like the Allen & Ginter mini frankenset, all my Dodgers tobacco minis, all my Hostess cards, including completed sets, the 2011 Topps Lineage set, and the '75 Lineage mini set, as well as all my TCMA sets -- Laughlin, etc., to the side. And the 1980 Topps Supers. Consider this portion the best of the oddballs, basically.

 

Above that are a couple of wall hangings, a Dodgers' pennant and the tribute to Vin Scully, handed out at the Giants' park, of all places, during his final broadcast.

 

 

Eeesh, bad picture, no time to retake. This is the column shelf next to the binder shelf. There is a lot more stuff in it than the last update. The top shelf contains Beckett magazines, most of the ones that have my articles. The second shelf has a box of my Kellogg's cards -- the only way for me to keep them with any kind of confidence that they won't crack. The third shelf has stuff totally unrelated to sports cards -- recipes and things like it. And the bottom shelf is mostly uncut 1990 Target Dodgers panels.

 

 

A look at the top of the column shelf. The Orel Hershiser picture that he signed "To Night Owl", the original Beckett price guide from 1979, a mug from the Hall of Fame, etc.

 

 

Blurry photo. I need a ladder to properly take this. It's a shelf above the door to the card room. There's a Roy Campanella plate, and a toy Dodgers tractor trailer. Plus lots and lots of dust, I'm sure.

 

 

Behind the door, it's another poster from Rod! Very appropriate. Underneath that, I hung the school folder tribute to Orel Hershiser's 1989 Topps card.

 

 

Here is the rolltop desk, once about the only place I had for my hobby, it sat in the dining room. Today, it's the hobby hub. This is where I stack any cards from the current year -- right now it's 2025 Heritage and some 2025 Bowman.

 

Also, there are some cards waiting for eventual packages to fellow collectors -- I will say no more. And you've got a sneak preview for the next 1993 Upper Deck blog subject!

 

 

The top left shelf in the desk is reserved for Dodgers cards that need adding to my Dodgers binders. I'm currently updating and in the middle of 2003.

 

 

The owls Johnny sent me a couple years ago stand guard in front of family pictures atop the rolltop desk.

 

 

 A look at the lower portion of the rolltop desk. The safe -- not locked right now, obviously, contains the 1956 Topps set as well as the 1975 minis set and my binder of Dodgers autographs.

 

Above that are my page boxes for various sized pages -- 4-pocket, 2-pocket, 8-pocket, 1-pocket, 3-pocket, 15-pocket.

 

That one long box to the side is some Score and Pinnacle cards from the mid-1990s. And in the drawers to the right, you can find boxes for my Donruss, Fleer and Upper Deck cards for sets that aren't complete and never will be.

 

 

The shelving above the rolltop desk. Looks much the same as it did five years ago. The autographed birthday card from Ron Cey at the very top is probably my favorite thing here. But there's other cool things, too, like the photo of Pedro Guerrero autographing a card to me, and the Ron Cey button I ordered back in 1980. So much goodness.

 

Off to the left of that is the main '75 originals card displays. Those haven't changed nor will they ever I don't think. And you can see the Ron Cey-Fleetwood Mac lamp on the left edge of the rolltop desk. I've turned the portion of the shade with Cey's autograph away from the light in an attempt to keep it from fading. I probably should cover the whole thing, but that makes me sad.

 

 

Ah, we've reached my baseball-music corner. Baseball stuff on the top, the Ron Cey record, the giant 2009 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, the even more giant Topps Baseball Cards hard cover book featuring pictures of every Topps card from 1951 to 1985, and dwarfed in all that, my 1982 Topps Stickers book, with all the stickers tuck.

 

The bottom part is my modest turntable (a gift from my daughter) and a pickup from my most recent trip to the area flea market in town, Charlie Dore's "Where To Now" album. This is the one with "Pilot of the Airwaves" on it. That song -- the version that played on the radio in 1980 -- was notoriously unavailable on streaming for years, so this was well worth the 5 bucks.

 

Also there are a bunch of vinyl albums behind the record player.

 

 

Here's the card desk. This is where all the packaging takes place and usually where outgoing cards sit for weeks upon weeks upon weeks while they wait for dopehead to tell his job to shove it and get to what's really important -- sending people their cards!

 

The back of the desk has really been spruced up with empty boxes of recent Heritage product, my night owl business cards, the new Ron Cey bobblehead, that old typewriter I found at a different flea market where I grew up long ago, etc.

 

Underneath the table is a bin for all those necessities -- toploaders, team bags, cut up pages, address book, packaging tape, markers, envelopes, etc. The box to the right of that is one of two large boxes of Dodger dupes (the other is behind the bin). The cards on top of the box are Dodgers that need to be sorted into the dupes. By the way, those stacks are a lot smaller since I found a couple people to take my extras off my hands! Yay!

 

 

At the right of the card table sits the most recent Beckett magazines to feature my articles. I don't appear in the Beckett Baseball one much, mostly just the Vintage Collector, so that Ohtani issue has sat there for a few years. The basket behind contains old price guides, old Baseball Card Magazines, various programs, media guides and cool magazines going back to the '50s!

 

 

 

This is the second binder unit. This is a major upgrade from what I had five years ago. This unit contains all my Dodger binders, my NFL cards, including the '77 and '79 complete sets. And on the bottom row are completed sets post 1992, random favorites like 1993 Upper Deck, 2009 Topps, 2008 Heritage, 2009 OPC, 2015 Topps, etc. Also, any vintage card that isn't '56 or showed up before 1969 is in that orange binder, next to the 1967 binder, which will never be complete!

 

Like the first binder shelf, I've run out of room and there are horizontal binders for the 2024 Topps flagship set as well as the 2024 Heritage set. I really got to get my act together here.

 

The top of the second binder unit with lots of neat display stuff. All the old MusiCard boxes, Topps long boxes for complete sets from 2021, 2022 and 2024 (only 2024 is not empty with another complete 2024 set). My music cards binder is at the far left. Hanging on the wall are various Dodger items that hung on the wall way back when my first card room was super tiny across the hallway. 

Someday I expect this top shelf to be nothing but overflow binders, but I'm trying to avoid that.

 

 

More overflow binders. This is mostly my yearbook and postseason binders for the Dodgers. The boxes contain various Dodger relic cards, stuff to thick to include in pages, and you can see that original red, white and blue glove I used as a youngster way back in '76.

 

 

The shadow box of signed card from Reds closer Frank Smith is still in the same spot. I've never been able to take a decent pic of this.

 

 

 Almost forgot the 1980s boxed-set tower behind the door (and next to the waste basket).

 

And that's the updated tour.

 

 

This is how things look when you enter now. Not much has changed in five years really. Although my wife keeps saying she need to improve the window blinds. So maybe I'll do another update when that happens. 

 

Maybe that one actually will be on video. ... That's how you'll know I really went big-time.