Hey T206 Binder guys (I'm new here)
 

Hey guys , my name is Billy. This is my first post, so I'll give you a quick bio with my question.

I started my T206 Set Build in March of this year. I picked up both Tom Downey cards since he is the only player with my last name on a baseball card in the last 100 years. I became infatuated with the set. I own a Plumbing company, and when a customer pays me in Venmo, I typically dump that into my set build. I'm almost half way now (244) and I'm setting up a Binder Presentation. My son is getting me a Lighthouse Vario G with some 15 count pages for Christmas.



So here are my questions...
Many will say, its Your set, do it Your way.... but I'm looking for some opinions and ideas.

I have already decided to arrange in alphabetical order leaving vacant space for the cards I'm missing. With 15 cards per page, I will use 35 pages.

Of the 244 I have, 193 are raw. So that's easy, but what about the 50+ cards that are Graded. I'm willing to crack a PSA 1 or 2 to add to the Binder, but what about the higher graded cards? What about the more expensive HOFers?

If you crack a slab, do you keep the label in the binder?
Would you use a pic of the Slab in its place? Or an Index card?
Would you guys use reprint cards to mark the spot for slabbed cards?

I've considered selling my PSA SGC 4s/5s commons to purchase more lower grade or raw. cards.

How do you guys set up your Binder?


Thanks in advance.

- Billy

I like the idea at the end. Sell anything too nice to crack!

Welcome to the club.
I love to flip through my binder to peruse my collection.
My slabbed cards stay in a box and rarely get looked at.

I use the 15 count pages myself, but I started out putting only nine on a page, three rows of three. I liked that format for a couple of reasons, and it gave me room to expand on my basic 518 collection, which I have subsequently done (now over 800).

The one drawback of a binder is the potential of damaging a card when inserting it or removing it.
To prevent damage, I use a utility knife and a straight-edge to cut a penny sleeve in half, lengthwise. Then I insert the card into the sleeve and use a 6” flexible ruler to push the sleeve into the pocket. To remove the card, just pull the sleeve out of the pocket.
I’d show you scans but I’m not at home.

I do use reprint cards to represent slabbed cards. It’s not ideal but I can’t think of anything better.
I’ve probably cracked a hundred slabs in the past, but I don’t anymore. It’s too much of a money loss these days.

The Vario binder is the best.

Enjoy your quest!

Thanks Doug , I'd be interested in seeing that penny sleeve method before I get started.

This idea of only using the center 9 slots on a 15 count page is pretty interesting also. I could see myself using the outer 6 slots to hold the slab labels or player notes for cards that are on that page. Plus it helps fill space.

I have a 521 set. All raw. Everything that was in a slab I cracked out. Some were higher end. If I had to do it again, sell the higher end slabs and take the money and buy raw. The journey is the fun part. Completing the set was kind of a bummer. It’s like “what now??”…

WAIT !! You mean this all comes to an end one day?

It doesn’t have to end.
 

I too found that I enjoyed the quest more than accomplishing the goal.

What I ultimately did was to broaden my collection.
For instance, I started collecting the SC460/25 subset, and also back-stamps and off-backs. I’ve since broadened it more, and my collection now stands at 800+.

The nine card a page format works well, as I can add cards to the page when I get something new. Hardly any pages have nine anymore. I’ll post scans when I get a chance.
The broadened collection also works well for trading, in that I'll often be willing to trade a subject that I have two of, while still keeping my basic 518 intact.

I think that it’s tougher now than ever to compile an ungraded collection, as each card that gets graded leaves one less in the ungraded pool. So good luck any happy collecting.

Doug

I'm attacking the Beast by building a Polar Bear Subset first - RAW AND GRADED.

ANY nicer GRADED card that I get, stays in its tomb. (It just makes it easier for the SOMEONE who will SURELY sell them after I am ashes...)

I scan the graded card, front & back, and MAKE a repro using photo-quality paper - with A LITTLE patience, they look GREAT side by each with the raw cards that I have in pages!

Binder pages for the white border tobacco cards...

I sort them first by teams, then alphabetically. That's how the kids did it in 1910.

A really neat thing about doing it that way is that you can pull them out, then lay them out in series, by columns, alphabetically, starting with the 150 series. In the next column lay the cards so they're adjacent to their series 150 counterpart. What you can see, with the Cubs for example, is the uniform changes.

Many of the slabbed cards I've broken out. Some of the more expensive cards I've begrudgingly left slabbed, and for those I look for a reprint of the card on eBay and I put that in the pocket sheet. I have holes where I intend to place a real card if I can find a card in about good condition.


Every thread....

Great way to do it! My Brooklyn cards are in a binder sorted by color (!) but I made a graphic to show the sequencing of the cards.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...82db6e3ae0.jpg


Jason
Twitter: @heavyj28

Welcome!

244 /520 is already an impressive feat, nice work!

Love seeing 20 cards per page. Tough breaking out the more expensive graded cards, but it had to be done (flips all still on hand).

My collection is binder only ...
 

I've created a PDF that had all the players names in the space below where the card would go, and each sheet goes behind the corresponding page. That way, I can keep track of those I'm missing at a glance while I look through the collection (which is not as often as I would like). The downside is when I know someone has that card that is missing on a page, especially on a page that would be "complete" but I just can't wrestle it away from them.

Any cards that were encapsulated I've busted out, but keep the tag in the pocket on the binder. I've asked the wife for a Vario binder for Christmas (only thing I've asked for) so hoping I'll have a binder upgrade in a couple of weeks.

I’m a 20 guy myself! Protection probably lags a bit but you can’t beat the look.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...a9760043b2.jpg


Jason
Twitter: @heavyj28

Jason, I like seeing all of those Brooklyn players together!


Columns, left to right, 150 Series, 350 / Assorted Series / 460 Series

Some teams don't have a change of uniforms, and some do. For the Giants, it's subtle, the jersey letters change. For the Cubs, it's drastic... "Cubs" across the front changes to "Chicago" down the button flap of the shirt. You won't find a 460 card with Cubs on in, nor a Chicago card in the 150 Series.

So, there are 4 different Tinker cards in T206.
Cobb has 4 cards. Both were popular players at the time. McGraw has 4.

Speaker has one card, as does Wheat. But don't you reckon if their cards had been in the 150 Series, then we'd have seen more cards for them later on?

One player is on 5 cards, and most of us here know who that is without looking. But he's not among the better known players these days. 113 years ago he was very well known, and generally well thought of at the time. One of his cards has him holding a something other than a ball, bat, hat, or glove... the only such card in the set.

Q- how many T206 cards depict a base or home plate???

1...?

I'm working on a Zee-Nuts subset in a binder, but I'm only using the Vario pages. I went with a leather binder because I thought the Lighthouse company binders have the spine of a generic stage prop book. That's just my sense of aesthetics, though.

First of all, Welcome to the group Billy!!

Everyone has shared great thoughts and ideas. I'm not a T206 binder guy, but I use binders for more modern sets. As far as your graded cards, I would first attempt to see if any other collectors are looking to trade their raw cards for the same graded ones, while they also toss in any cash needed to make the values equal. There are collectors that prefer graded over raw, such as myself, and the right trade can get you a similar matching card, along with some extra cash, while the other collector doesn't get stuck with seller fees on their raw's, or even worse, grading fee's and the long wait time to receive their cards back. I would see if I could help you with some, but nearly all my 500 or so raw cards are non Piedmont or Sweet Caporal backs, with a few exceptions of some Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 25 cards.

Congrats on your T206 journey and how far you have come along. You are surrounded by many T206 collectors and experts of the set within this group. Great choice on the Lighthouse binder. I use many of their binders for my postage stamp collecting, and they are one of the very few binder companies that offer matching slip covers. A key to not having dusty staticy binder pages.

Best binders
 

I use a lot of the products from this company........

https://www.archivalmethods.com/cate...inders-albums/

UPDATE: Got the binder and 15-slot pages for Christmas

Stuffing the pages were awesome. First chance to touch , hold and smell most of these cards.

Whenever I figure out how to add pics to my post, I'll show you ...

Until then.

Heck yea! I pretty much only have focused on the binder at this point. Any graded cards I have are stored in some box until there is an ungraded duplicate to take its place. I used to just crack them open, but stopped once grading fees increased. This is probably 80% of my cubs at this point. Have made a decent amount of additions since I did this. When they are in 15 count sheets, it makes a grid like this much easier.



https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...f36a73ec04.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi Billy
Of the above thoughts, I like the one about selling the higher graded cards, slabbed. Then use that money to buy cards that look at least almost as good, and raw... Good luck in the quest. As some have said, sometimes the journey is most of the fun..

Some original collection raw ones...

https://luckeycards.com/t206x4.jpg