When does a collection border hoarding?

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Yanks21

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I misplaced a non-sports related item recently and after a search that came up empty I could not believe how truly massive my collection really is. After being in my house now for 15 years I went from collecting Sports everything down to just baseball, then down to just Yankees and then the last few years specific players. I still will pick up just about anything Yankees.

My collection has spilled into different rooms of the house and some of the places I looked for this missing item I have not been in, in years. I opened a cabinet that I knew contained Yankees stuff but I could not believe how much stuff I had in there that I have had no recollection of owning. I have no plans of selling stuff and I am constantly searching for other items to add. I am by no means like these people in the hoarding shows but when do you have enough or when is having 10 of something enough.
I can’t just have a rookie card. I have to have 10 of them, two more graded 10’s by two companies, a couple on front of rack packs, blank backs, variations ect. Ya get my point?


Anyone else out there amazed at the quantity of stuff they accumulated in his or her collections?

Any suggestions on how to scale down if I ever choose too?

Curious if I am alone on this one?
 
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I think it is Hoarding when you have cards in your Kitchen and in your Bathroom,Like on of my trading friends.
 
You are not alone. I am here with you...LOL

I recently started getting rid of things I dont really care about Completed Sets, Commons etc. So far I have cleared out about 10% of what I want to get rid of. Seriously wanna scale it doen to just Maddux and Lee Collections and My tradebait., Going well, but going slow. Organizing things so I can get rid of them is the biggest time suck ive ever come acorss, Been working on it for a month now and have barely scratched the surface, but I'll get there.

-Nick
 
You know you are not alone!

I sometimes question myself at times, but I do enjoy looking through boxes and albums and having the satisfaction that I have these items and they are not just window shopping daydreams, such as at a card shop, show or website. However, what am I really going to do with all this stuff or does anyone besides me want it? My wife tolerates it to a point. My boys may grow interested over time, but probably not the same type of stuff I like. They are 6 and 8 now, so they are close. I have a room devoted to my stuff, which is not all sports memorabilia, but mostly it is. I have the garage packed with stuff as well as the storage closet under my staircase.

I have tried to narrow my collecting focus and have had some success in narrowing my acquisitions to certain categories, but have never been able to completely purge other areas I no longer "actively" collect. For example, I got into hockey cards a while back. I probably have 20-30K hockey cards. I don't like hockey, I don't follow hockey, but I keep the stuff. It would be hard for me to part with certain parts of the collection (vintage stars, auto'd cards, a couple key SLUs. magazines and oddball items, but I could probably rid myself of some of the bulk (post 80s singles, vintage commons, etc).

I have been going through my Garvey collection recently, half to organize better, but half in the thought that I am ready to thin the heard. It is amazing to see how much duplication I have. Some because it was a good deal, some because it came in larger lots, some because I didn't realize I already had the item, some because I just couldn't allow someone else to get it at a bargain price!

I am making some progress though. I opened two boxes of 1984 Topps Fun Food buttons this weekend, not because I was building a set or looking for a specific button, but because I finally convinced myself that keeping them unopened was unnecessary. These buttons were not rare or limited. Having unopened boxes won't put my kids through college in 15 years! Now I need to organize them and get them out the door, because I don't need them!
 
I have been trying for a while now and it is not easy.

1)Player Collection
2)Complete my sets to trade them off

My goal is to one day only have my player collection and my master set,we will see how that goes.
 
I always said I had enough to open a store and that is true. I have more inventory than most of the stores I have ever come across, unless they have off site storage.

The real question we all must face at some point is what am I going to do with this stuff? Will you pass it along to someone else? Will you try to sell it over time to make some money for you, your family, a charity, other? Will you blow it out just to get rid of it, selling a huge collection at once? Will you not worry about it and die, leaving it for someone else to decide?

As I enter my 40s, I have been thinking about it more that before. Maybe I should start selling stuff off slowly now. If I do it to maximize return, it will take a very long time and patience. How long should one wait? We could all kick it at any point, but the longer you wait, the less time you'll have!

If I had to limit myself completely right now, it would sill be incredibly hard. I have the Garvey collection, Thomas collection, Oliver collection, Carew collection, other smaller player collections, Dodgers collection, Raiders collection, autographs, vintage, inserts, oddball sets, SLUs, magazines and more. I like it all!

OK, I will start with 1984 Donruss Action All Stars! Wait, NOBODY wants that junk!!
 
I tend to feel someething has gone horribly wrong when I buy another 5000-ct monster box at the LCS to accomodate all the crap that has been piling up on flat surfaces in my card room andthat the box is immediately full, and I STILL have stacks of cards scattered around the room.

I have a "sorting table" that I've never been able to use for sorting because it's so buried in random piles of cards and stickers. Every time I think I'm just about to clear a space, something else gets piled on. I don't even buy as much as I used to! But buying a 150-200 card lot for the 1 rare piece I need, is a major contributor to the clutter.

"Good deals" on stuff that doesn't directly add to my player collections are the worst! Why else would I have bought 50 packs of 1995 Panini stickers from a seller in the UK? I didn't need anything from the set, BUT IT WAS SUCH A GOOD DEAL! Which explains why I have piles of unopened stickers, minor league stuff from 1989-1991 and even crap like half a box of 1988 Topps Big series 3.
 
Me myself I set limits and guidelines from the beginning... I do not keep more than 1 nice copy of each card that I want for my Braves PC for instance so that cuts back a lot of that extra
 
You're not alone by a long shot. I come from a long line of pack rats, so it's been drilled into me. (Seriously, my grandfather would go to garage sales and pick up more tools even into his 70's. The guy had 27 claw hammers! Here's a snippet of a conversation we had in his later years, when he was on a boatload of different pills:
Gramps: Well, have another pill bottle to go in the box downstairs, now I have 423 of them.

Me: Gramps, what in the blue **** are you doing keeping 400 pill bottles around for? Throw it away!

Gramps: well, they're great for storing things like watch springs and small finishing screws...

me: How many screws do you have to store?

Gramps: well, if I get back into watch repair or antique repair, I might need them.

between that, my collection with no real focus, just whatever strikes me at the time, and my love of gambling leading to purchases of boxes looking for the next big hit...I've got stacks everywhere, boxes all over.
 
If you want to feel better about your collection just walk into my house sometime. Got them in the living room, bedroom, a closet in the bathroom, a closet in the bedroom, etc...... But I also wonder as I get older what will become of my collection when I am gone. I picked a beautiful 1960 Topps Yaz rookie. I showed it to my kids and they wanted to sell it so they could buy games at Gamestop. That is when I really start to wonder what will become of my collection.
 
You are not alone. I am here with you...LOL

I recently started getting rid of things I dont really care about Completed Sets, Commons etc. So far I have cleared out about 10% of what I want to get rid of. Seriously wanna scale it doen to just Maddux and Lee Collections and My tradebait., Going well, but going slow. Organizing things so I can get rid of them is the biggest time suck ive ever come acorss, Been working on it for a month now and have barely scratched the surface, but I'll get there.

-Nick

Same here. I started the process at the beginning of the year and am almost finished.
 
I was hoarding cards from 1990 to 2008! Now days....I'm starting to trade or sell them...cutting back and only keeping the cards or sets that I like! Best regards, David
 
I sold about 80% of my collection (mostly commons from the 80's and 90's recently ... about 10,000 that I had in 700 ct. boxes) and threw out 2 large copy boxes of magazines, price guides, etc.

I put my comic books on craigslist and if they don't sell, they're going to good will with a lot of other stuff I am donating.

It was relief to get rid of all of that stuff and clear up space.

My next project is about the 1,500 records that I have from DJ'ing, to get that cut in half. That's going to be the biggest challenge because with the advent of digital forms, there is much less of a demand for vinyl. My vinyl went from being pretty useful to relatively useless, quickly.

I'd say it becomes hoarding when you are holding just to hold because you are afraid if you let it go you will miss out on its value or utility. If it starts to intrude on your space, that is a sign too, which is why I wanted to get rid of the cards.

As I turn 30, I don't want to look like the 40-yr-old ****** in a few years ...
 
Thanks to everyone replying to this thread. I don't feel so all alone now and over whelmed about all of the stuff that I have.
A fairly big storage room full and overflowed into my show room. I've been trying to combine, sort, put away, sell for a year now and can't see an end in site. Why, oh why, oh why did this happen to me? I'm worried my kids will use this all for a bonfire someday.
 
It is good to see how many people are in my shoes. I usually do my best with this hobby over the winter. I hope to get a start at a minimum better organization of this room and start from there.
 
i was cleaning my room a couple of weeks ago just trying to get rid of the clutter when i discovered a couple boxes and books filled with Cards i didnt think i still had. i knew it was time to start getting rid of them instead of letting them sit around and take up space

so far so good, still working on getting rid of everything.
 
My problem is organization. I'll get my cards in boxes and feel good about
it, but then I start checking threads to put trades together. Before I realize
it, I've got cards scattered everywhere and my wife is telling me to clean
them up:rolleyes: But you know theres no better feeling than looking over at my
coffee table and seeing a mountain of bubble mailers ready to go out;)
 
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