Baseball Card Storage Tips

How do you store your baseball cards? If you’ve got a 100 cards or a 100,000 cards, you’ve got to have a place and a way to store your cards. I’m not talking about protecting your cards necessarily. I’m talking about what “things” do you use to put your cards in when you’re not looking at them. Where do you put your cards, when they aren’t out on a table for some reason.

First, let’s talk about what you put your baseball cards in to store them. Some people use tupperware bins to store their cards. These are good, because you can be sure that they are waterproof protected, from the sides and bottom anyway. But you’ve got to be a bit careful, because many of these plastic bins are rounded on the corners. If you are going to go with this method, make sure that you get a perfectly square cornered bin.

Other people use a shoe box for their baseball card storage. Doesn’t hearing of storing baseball cards in a shoe box remind you of all the stories you’ve heard about somebody’s Mom throwing out their baseball cards? Well, this is one of the cheapest methods of storing your cards, but definitely not the best. For one, most shoe boxes aren’t made of the most sturdy cardboard. If you dropped something on the box, it’s going to bend, and possibly damage your baseball cards. If that cardboard gets wet, well, guess what? The water will seap through that thin cardboard real quick and right into the cardboard you were collecting.

If you’re going to use a cardboard box, go with a standard count box that you can find from one of the leading card supply dealers or on eBay. These boxes are thicker than your standard shoe box, so if you drop something on the box, or drop the box itself, the box has a less likely chance of bending and then damaging your cards. Another cool thing about these standard count boxes, is that you’ll know how many standard size baseball cards you’ll be able to store in each box. So if you have 753 baseball cards you want to store, you know that you’ll need at least an 800 count card storage box for those cards.

Of course, if you are looking to store very valuable cards that you already have in penny sleeves and top-loaders or hard plastic cases, then you probably don’t want to use these standard count boxes, because with the protection on the baseball cards, they won’t fit well in the box.

Okay, so let’s talk about where you put the thing that you’re storing your cards in. Let’s just assume that you’re not putting that thing in your basement right next to the washer machine, right? Okay, good.

Another place that many people have stored their baseball cards is the attic (usually where their Mom found the cards and then tossed them!) Dangerous too, because the heat, mildew, cold and other atmospheric changes will definitely affect those cards. Just think if a T206 Wagner had been in an attic for 75 years. Would be a sweet find, but thinking of all the weather over those years, you know it wouldn’t be in as good shape as if it was in a box in the back of a closet.

So, if you have a place where you can store your baseball cards that is fairly well temperature controlled, that’s where you want to put them. Do you have central air and central cooling? If so, feel free to put the cards in your closet.

Don’t put them in a box on top of a T.V., air conditioner, computer or any other device that gives off heat.

Those are just a few tips on how to store your cards. Do you have any tips on how to store baseball cards? How about the way that you store your baseball cards? Please leave a comment and let us all know.