By Josh:
Every baseball card collector has their own unique way of sorting their cards. Some do it by team listed on the card. Others sort cards by year, brand and card number. Then there are those who sort all of their cards in alphabetical order by last names.
Over my years of card collecting I have used all three of these sorting methods. As a kid I first sorted cards by teams. This allowed me to go straight to my favorite teams to look at cards of my favorite players. Plus it was the easiest way to sort cards for me.
As I started to receive complete sets for birthdays and Christmas gifts I started sorting by year, brand and card number. I had the goal of completing as many sets as I possibly could. This method worked for me for years. When I needed cards of a specific player I could just pull up his card number for each set and pull the cards.
For a while this worked great but now that I have a lot more cards in my collection (some where around 60,000 cards) it is becoming very time consuming to go through dozens of boxes for each player. So today I started the long and daunting process or organizing every one of my baseball cards in alphabetical order.
I’ve known for a while that I’ve needed to organize my cards this way but I’ve been putting it off for as long as possible. I think it is because I knew just how tedious this task was going to be. Don’t get me wrong I love going through my cards but this task is not how I enjoy looking at cards.
I believe that if I have to go through all of this I should share it with everyone else. So over the next who knows how long I am going to write posts about some of the cards I see and some of the feelings I feel throughout this process, and I am going to do it from A-Z starting today.
‘A’ is where we begin.
Already I’m wishing I had enough money to pay someone else to do it. Although, I am amazed at how many cards I have that I don’t remember seeing before.
Aardsma is the first player in my collection of cards according to last name. I have actually met David Aardsma a couple of times and gotten his autograph on quite a few cards. Easily one of my favorite people in baseball.
Axford or Axelrod would be my choice for a last name if it had to start with an A just because you can have a nickname revolving around The Axe.