Sorting Cards

I love to sort and organize my cards into complete sets, team piles for trades and single players for trades or a card show. When I was a kid my dad found a plastic tray that allowed us to sort our cards in 100s, then 10s when building the latest Topps or Donruss set.

When I returned to The Hobby in early 2012, the old tray was long gone and forgotten about. When I was digging through a childhood’s worth of cards, I started to miss that old tray. I did some quick research (Google) and found that BCW had a great tray to sort 100s & 10s at the same time. I was so excited I purchased two of them. Here is a link to the Sorting Tray and a seller with a great price and free shipping.

BCW Sorting Tray

It has 10 deep slots for the 100s in the back and 10 shallow ones in the front to sort the 10s. A huge bonus feature is the 4 storage areas on the right side of the tray that holds close to 400 cards. I use these for all the cards I’m sorting at the moment.

Sometimes sorting my team can become tricky and you find that you have two slots for one team. I found this out the hard way when I was sorting close to 50,000 cards late last year. I created a quick fix to help me stay organized while sorting; TEAM DIVIDERS!

Ultra Pro makes Semi-Rigid Card Dividers that are the same size as the slots in the tray. Here’s a link to buy them on eBay. I figured I would just write all of the team names on the dividers and start sorting, then my inner-nerd took over and I wanted to print them out in team colors.

I was able to locate all of the MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL team colors codes online so I could print the names out in their official team colors. I then download the Avery Template for this 5160 mailing labels I had purchased to use on the dividers.

I now wanted a cool font. I didn’t want one the generic run of the mill, Microsoft Word fonts. My favorite baseball set of all time in 1987 Topps. I wanted to use the font from the nameplates on these cards. I was able to locate the font, Dom Casual STD. It’s not the best name for such a great font but it works.

I also included a few franchises that have moved cities and changed their team names. (Ex Montreal Expos)

Here are my results:

Major League Baseball

National Football League

National Basketball Association

National Hockey League

I have made these documents downloadable for anyone that would like to you them. Just click the league banner and it will take you the document. When you first see it the font will not be correct, but if you have downloaded the Dom Casual STD, it will populate correctly after the download.

A few items you will need to have so the will format correctly. You will need to download the font; it’s free and the link is provided above, Avery 5160 mailing labels and a color printer. When downloading the documents, you will notice the font isn’t correct. If you have already downloaded the Dom Casual STD, it will populate correctly when you open the download.