I am looking for pictures of things like shoeboxes filled with raw cards, gallon bags, rubber banded cards, loose stacks of cards, laminated cards, etc.
Basically, I just wanna see glimpses of our younger selves and how we approached storing these cherished cards. Things were so much simpler back then. Sleeving was an afterthought, as was the inherent value these cards would one day have. These storage methods are little time capsules of back then, even if they are a bit cringeworthy by today’s standards.
Here is how a lot of my collection was stored. This picture was from around 2019, when I first got back into collecting. The yugioh cards are still in those gallon bags.
My piece of shit Ikea commode would be perfect for this thread, truly the stuff of nightmares. Not only loose cards swimming around but also cards pinched in between the loose boards. Sometimes you could hear crunching sounds as the thing was crudely forced shut.
Only Topps and commons I had a bazillion copies of suffered this fate.
I wish I had a photo. I kept my rares and the best copy of each individual card I had in a ring binder. No card sleves and I doubled them up on both sides. So you could see a different card on each side of the page. Even worse, if I had variants, like 1st Edition and Unlimited, I would just put them all in the same slot. So you could potentially have 6 cards in a slot. The uncommon and common doubles just went in a shoebox. So dumb but I was a little kid.
I did the doubling too lol. I did have a three ring binder at one point (that ended up with sand in most of the pockets) but before that i just had a nice little stack with an elastic band around it. I have a very distinct memory of leaving it in the shelf of my fridge. I guess i thought it would be safe in there?
Elastic band to hold them all together, then into the school bag for playground showing off. At home I kept cards in biscuit tins, kids today with sleeves, top loaders and zip binders are missing out!
My original collection was stored sleeveless in an old, empty dresser in the basement at my grandmothers house. I would just pile them up in there like a madman so I could grab handfuls and lay them out on the floor so I could read them all.
I used to store cards that way.
I’m just glad only a proper binder survived, cause I need to forget what happened to the rest… You don’t want to hear it either…
I’ll post the pictures again when i can but a few shoe boxes of assorted pokemon figures and toys, a deck display and booster box full of stacks of loose cards, holos double or triple stuffed into penny sleeves, holos stuffed into plastic bags that werent quite penny sleeves (card sleeves were apparently a rarity), and folders that had card pages with like 6 cards per stretched-to-the-limits pocket. Fun times for collecting but not very good for preservation.
I unfortunately did not take photos of my old collection, but most of my Pokemon cards were in a zipper binder with cheap 9 card pocket pages. They have now been organized and put into a box, and some of the cards have been top loaded.
I got the 9 card pocket pages for free from my sisters friend. Her friend got this free sports card binder filled with football cards with facsimile signatures on all the cards. I ended up throwing away the cards and moving the pocket pages to my own binder lol…
In some pockets, I stored multiples. Like I remember having some energy cards in some of my pages, and there’d be like 10 energy cards squeezed into one pocket for example. These pockets pages were pretty loose
I had a handful of top loaded cards. My holos; one was a dragonball Z card. These top loaders were thrown on top of the pocket pages within the binder.
Also thrown in the binder were a ton of loose raw cards, many of them were Japanese energy cards because I bought a Japanese starter deck when I was young and I didn’t know where to put them all. I had ran out of pocket pages
And I also had a couple base set starter theme deck rule books thrown in there.
I usually just snapped an elastic band around my cards. If they were going with me somewhere, I’d stuff them into the pocket of my jeans. And inevitably through the washing machine.
This thread brings back so many good and bad memories.
My original collection had binder and loose 9 pocket pages, better cards had their own slot but energy cards/trainers were placed on top of each other. Things could’ve been worse, many kids brought their card stack to school in ziplock bags and/or rubber bands.
Soft sleeves weren’t a thing back then, I don’t remember ever seeing these in nearby stores. One of the biggest mind blown discoveries when I started buying actually good supplies for current collection in 2013.
Surprisingly, I actually had a binder. Then that binder was lost. I graduated to a shoe box. Pretty wild how much things have changed for younger collectors!
I think i was abnormal already as a kid since i never used any rubber bands or boxes but instead i had even my doubles well organized in my binders without any stacking or other mischiefs. However i did have a habit of regularly reorganizing my binders in a fierce way so all the cards didn’t stay as nm even though they were otherwise quite properly handled. I did accidentally bend one card in the process but when considering the time i spent organizing the binders it’s quite miracle it happened only once, otherwise my cards did survive into my adulthood in very good condition.
About sleeves, i think i only had one which i saved for a very special card, which was a printed neo discovery tyranitar glued on an energy card the artwork was mesmerizing for a kid me and since i never got it as a kid it was one of the very first cards i bought when returning in collecting as an adult
Gotta make sure that the 2-5 cards in a single pocket get properly wrecked.
the artwork was mesmerizing for a kid me and since i never got it as a kid it was one of the very first cards i bought when returning in collecting as an adult
