Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Boxes for Baseball Cards
Baseball Card Boxes are commonly available with 1 to 5 rows, each holding anywhere from 500 to 800 cards. Baseball Cards are typically laid on their longer edged sides in the baseball card boxes rows, though there are some options available where the cards sit upright instead.
You may be wondering why you should spend your hard earned money on special basball card boxes rather than just save a couple of bucks and reuse an ordinary old box you've got lying around the house already. If the storage box you use isn't sized appropriately to keep the baseball cards from moving around they're bound to get damaged at some point. Shoe boxes are a popular choice among the uninformed but they are thin and flimsy and they'll eventually bend or break at some point while being handled causing the cards to move around and get damaged. Specialized boxes are well worth the money, and they’re super cheap.
Typically boxes will store anywhere from 500 to 800 cards in each row. This is a good storage option if you have thousands of cards and it’s become impractical to store them all in binders or individual plastic baseball card holders. Storing large quantities of cards in baseball card boxes gives you a great safe place to keep those common low-value cards that we tend to accumulate when collecting cards over the years.
It’s most common for baseball card boxes to be made out of cardboard, which is completely fine for most scenarios. Plastic boxes are also available though they are usually more expensive and a lot more difficult to find, they're typically not worth the extra cost though. The cardboard boxes are pretty tough if you get good ones and as long as you aren’t stacking them floor to ceiling they’ll keep your cards nice and safe.
You can find baseball card storage boxes at most of the same places you can buy other types of baseball card holders.. Local card shops, card shows, WalMart, Target, Amazon or eBay are all places to look.
I usually prefer to order online and typically will default to Amazon over eBay, though both are good options most of the time.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Baseball Card Sleeves
Baseball Card Sleeves are also commonly known as Penny Sleeves. These soft plastic card holders can help prevent your cards from minor damage when they are being handled.
Also Useful for Collectible Card Games...
Collectible Card Game cards such as Magic The Gathering or Pokemon can also benefit from baseball card sleeves. Collectible card game cards such as these can actually have the potential for surprisingly high monetary values in the collectors market.
It’s not uncommon to see some Pokémon cards selling for over $100 on eBay these days, and there are several Magic the Gathering cards that sell well into the hundreds and even a few that will go for over $1000.
It makes sense to keep these cards well protected and to use baseball card sleeves considering such high potential for value exists. The nice thing about penny sleeves in this case is that you can keep the sleeves on while playing the games with the cards. It’s not too difficult to shuffle your deck with the sleeves on and whether you’re playing on a carpeted floor or a table-top you’ll be a lot less likely to nick up those corners if you keep sleeves on the cards.
Bringing it back to Baseball
Baseball cards and other sports cards themselves aren’t handled nearly as much of as collectible card game cards of course, but they do get handled, after all what fun would collecting baseball cards be if we didn’t take them out to look at them once in a while We all know the urge to browse through a stack of cards can be almost irresistible sometimes.
Where to Buy Baseball Card Sleeves
Penny Sleeves can be found at many places including eBay, Amazon, internet specialty shops, local card shops, and local big chain stores. I've scoured the net and compiled my list of the cheapest options below. You might be able to find some cheaper knock-off's from some shady company online if you try, but I've made a point to stick to highly reputable companies that have been respected in the market for years.
Here is a quick tip from my own experience. Regardless of which kind of cards you are planning to use them on, stick with sleeves marketed for baseball cards rather than collectible card games. Card sleeves geared towards collectible card games tend to have much higher price tags.
My favorite places to buy baseball card sleeves online are Amazon and eBay. Amazon has a big advantage when it comes to shipping costs and speeds compared to most eBay sellers, especially for Amazon Prime members. For smaller lot sizes you'll often find that eBay sellers are offering better prices than Amazon but that when you factor in shipping costs Amazon's price turns out to be better, and sometimes by a long shot.
Amazon is almost always the better deal for any quantity under 1000 when it comes to price, speed of shipping, convenience, and the all important trust factor that comes from dealing with Amazon versus a random eBay seller. If you're buying a huge lot of baseball card sleeves then it might make sense to deal with the random seller on eBay instead, you could end up saving up to 30% per sleeve by doing so.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)