Binge/Purge

I bought 3000 Griffeys.

I shy away from eBay lots because there’s not much they can do for me in the way of new Griffeys; but this one piqued my interest. The seller is a Griffey collector, and the auction was for all his duplicates. Get a load of the picture that accompanied the auction. Say hello to the Adelanto Lot:

I named it that because it’s from a collector in Adelanto, CA. I named it at all because this box is the catalyst for major change here at The Junior Junkie.

Now here’s a picture of my own duplicate box:

See what I mean? It’s someone else’s Griffey overflow box, and it looks just like mine (kinda)! The moment I saw it I knew I’d love nothing more than to root through that box like a pig sniffing for duplicate cardboard truffles.

I had to win the auction the old-fashioned way, but it went for less than I was expecting. It’s currently on its way to my house, and guess who has two thumbs and Thursday off work? This guy.

Simply put, my plan for this massive box of Griffeys goes like this:

1.            Buy it

2.            Take what I need

3.            Throw in what I don’t

4.            Sell it again

By the time I’m finished with this box it should have a couple of thousand more Griffeys than it did before. I’m expecting it to land around 5000, including most of the 3000 it arrived with. I’ll leave in everything of value that I don’t need (save for a few I want duplicates of) to preserve the overall value of the collection and put it right back on eBay for the next guy. If I make 80% of my money back it will have been worth it just to pour through all those cards.

This is also helping move along a project I’ve been putting off for some time: the great cleaning out of the binders. There was a time when I kept every Griffey card in the binders. ALL OF THEM. All fifty copies of the ’91 Upper Deck base card, all sixty or so copies of the ’90 Donruss base card, page after full page of identical overproduced junk wax. I used to get a kick out of going through all those pages, and it made it really easy to spot the variants.

Then the day came when some of the binders refused to close all the way. They stayed propped open by way too many pages. It was time to start imposing storage rules. The first rule: no more than a full page of the same card; thus the Griffey Overflow Box was born.

The First Generation Griffey Overflow Box(es).  I went out and bought that big 5000-count box literally the very next day.

This worked well for a while, but the 2005-2008 and 2009-present binders started to get ridiculous and difficult to store. The rules had to get even stricter: no more than three of the same card on a page not counting parallels.

I’ve been forced to apply this rule to the two aforementioned binders because they were bursting to the point of impracticality, thereby defeating the whole point of the binder system. The result so far has been more efficient storage and a fuller overflow box. It also could result in one less binder if I get really strict (I won’t).

The day has been approaching when I’ll have to do the same to the rest. I think this box that is currently en route to my house is the catalyst I needed to bite the bullet and downsize the entire collection.

So, how many duplicates of each card should I keep? Should I keep the same number of copies for each card or more for certain ones? And which ones? Should I just get rid of duplicates altogether?

Decisions must be made. The Great Purge is upon us.