What Type Of Collector Am I Really?

One of the things I have really noticed in the past two months of blogging is the differences we all have in our collections.  One that seems to be the most widely used are the set builders, which I am not.  Though I have my players I collect first and foremost I actually only keep/collect rookie, semi, and star players. 

I have a room where I have three of the four walls full of shelves.  My middle row shelves are in A,B,C order from years 1980-present (no relics/autos) for example from Dusty Ackley to Ryan Zimmerman.  The top rows hold my baseballs, bobble heads, etc.  My bottom rows hold my common rookies and common insert cards.  The rest of the common cards I put in a box and get donated at the end of the year to local children's hospitals.  

Each card that is a semi star or star gets a penny sleeve. (yes, I have over 150,000 cards in penny sleeves).  The whole idea I organize it this way is if I am looking for a certain card I of a player I want to be able to find it in a minute.  The common rookies and common inserts are organized by years if a common insert or rookie needs found fast.   I then have a separate shelf for my vintage cards pre 1979 by year/type/number order.  Next shelf has my relics/autos broken down by sports, type of relics/autos/years.  Last I have a common shelf I don't organize, I just fill a box close it up and near the end of the year my son and I box up again to donate.  The whole purpose of why I choose to do it this way is to be able to find a certain card or player in less than a minute.  Not too many collectors that have 500,000 cards can say that, I'm proud of
 that!

My relics/autos

An example of how I open a box of cards:

Some collectors on youtube open packs and just go card to card then just pile them back up.  I do something different, to some people it may look like I'm playing solitaire. 

When I am done opening the box, the common RC/inserts go right into their spots, I put the semi/star cards in sleeves then right into ABC order and so on.  In theory it goes right from box to its place in minutes.  I try to explain this to a non collector and they look at me like I am from another planet. 

The reason I wrote this is to show how hard it is for me to sometimes look at a persons want list who just puts numbers, because I don't organize any of my cards by numbers or types.  But if you have a want list by a player and types of cards you need of that player it is easy for me to go to that player and look!  I hope that helps some of the people who have emailed me and said I need certain number cards of certain sets.  A few years ago I looked like a hoarder, I would not get rid of any cards, at one point I was near 1,000,000 cards.  I had hundreds of thousands of common cards that I would never do anything with, so that when I started getting rid of commons and now I feel I have a much better feel of my collection!  I hope you all enjoyed a little look into how I collect and store my card collection so next time anyone emails me, just tell me a name or name and type of card not just a number.

Jason