A Fun Trading Card Activity

I recently read a short article published online by Becket that gave me some ideas and fun ways to display a baseball card collection.  It would work with any card collection.  In essence, take a set of baseball cards, film cards, game cards, and choose your favorite nine cards from a set.  The criteria could be nine players from the same team, nine favorite signature cards, nine cards with your favorite art.  It could be anything that strikes you at the moment.

Choosing the nine cards is the fun of this activity!  It gives you a chance to review the collection in more detail.  In some cases, it lets you revisit a set that you haven't looked at in a long time.  Once you've got your nine cards chosen, then grab a clear, 9-pocket sheet for cards.  Arrange your cards how you want in the 9-pocket sheet then use that to display your cards!  You could display them in a frame to look at on a shelf or on the wall of an office, or you could collect sheets in a binder that you keep out for frequent viewing.  Instead of having the entire 2-inch thick set binder, this creates a binder of multiple sets in a small, easy-to-view binder of your favorite cards.  

I really like that in order to create set sheets of favorite cards, you need to really dig through sets of cards.  Pull those binders or card boxes out of the basement storage area, and look at those cards that you love so much!  What good are they doing hiding in the basement or crawl space or closet?  Sure, they are out of the way and protected, but didn't we buy them because they are fun to look at?  I also like when I get tired of looking at the nine I chose, I can revisit the set and switch them out for another nine and continue to enjoy my sets of cards.

I don't know about all of you, but I have cards all over the place that I never get to look at because they are carefully put away in boxes and carefully placed on shelves off the floor in my basement storage area. Why do I do that?  Yes, they are nice and organized and safe, but I never get to look at them.  I have Star Wars cards, Topps Baseball and Football, Pokemon cards, Magic the Gathering cards.  My kids have Hello Kitty and My Little Pony and Pokemon cards.  With this activity, we spent 20 minutes recently filling some sheets to enjoy.  That is all it took.  A few minutes to locate the boxes and 15 minutes to flip through a few stacks of cards that we hadn't seen in a few years.  It was fun and we shared some memories and stories about where we bought them and how hard we tried to fill sets.

Anyway, I am happy that I came across this post from Becket with this fun activity.  It gave new life to those old cards and brought my family together with a quick and fun activity.  Enjoy!