Renovations at Wrigley Wax World Headquarters

This year we are having my parents and brothers over to our house for Thanksgiving. But before we can give thanks to God, we first have to do all sorts of projects around the house to get ready for our company.

Its been about two years since I've gotten back into collecting, and during that time I haven't really had a decent spot to store things. I was just grabbing a shelf here, closet space there. But with the Thanksgiving remodeling we have going on, I decided to take a corner of the basement and do some renovating there. I am creating a space to get all my cards together in one spot. I'm also getting a computer workspace put together, so I'll be able to work on the blog and get the cards all in the same area.

Today I want to show you the centerpiece of my collection, my Cubs cards. When I do a "Five Random Cubs Cards" post, I mention the number of Cubs cards I have. Right now it is up to 5,827 and I have all of them stored neatly on this new shelf:



I've read that it is better to store binders flat rather than upright. Since these cards are the crown jewel of the collection, that is how I store them. I like using these smaller white folders because the stack nicely, aren't too heavy to deal with, and can hold around 300 cards. They are a perfect size for ten years worth of Topps cards.



This shelf has the Topps Cubs team sets from the '50s. 60's, and 70's. The cards are separated by year and then each year has the players in alphabetical order. Each season has a page that I use to divide the folder up.



This is the divider page for 1969. It has the team record and place finished, plus season stats of each of the players. The logos at the top are from that season. Players that have a card in the set are in bold print. The dividers make it quick and simple to find a year. If I'm looking for a 1973 Billy Williams, I can find it in a matter of seconds. Just grap the '70's folder, flip ahead to the 1973 page divider, and then find the card.



This is what the front covers look like. That's another reason I like these binders; I can design my own covers and spines. I added the blue pinstripes, like on the Cubs home uniforms, to give the cover come color. Otherwise, a white cover on a white binder looks pretty plain.



This is the cover to my Bowman collection. On all of the other brands, I put a brand logo. I didn't on Topps because to me, Topps is baseball cards. If the cover says "Cubs Team Sets" I can just assume its Topps. Remember, when I was a kid, Topps was the only game in town.

There are some brands that had a short run, and I have combined some of them into one folder.



This is the folder for Score and Select.

I'm real happy with how the shelf and binders turned out. Everything is easy to get to and easy to look through. And that I why I have the cards in the first place. I want to be able to enjoy them with little fuss.

Other projects as part of the world headquarters remodel include heavy duty shelves for all my complete sets, the previously mentioned computer area, and display shelves for my wax packs. I'll show those in future posts.