Organizing Cards is Stressful..

[zchartin]

Hello! I have a rather large collection of Pokemon cards, about 1000, that I had thrown all together in one tote. I finally decided to organize them and start collecting/trading them as a hobby.. and I never realized how much of a pain it is to sort Pokemon cards. I'm sorting them in binders with card sleeves, by type. I have one binder for each type. I'm also storing them alphabetically in each binder (only by the first letter), and I keep running into issues. For example, if I fill up my Water binder with cards in alphabetical order, and I open a pack with a Water type that starts with A, I have to move tons of cards to make space in the A category. People have suggested leaving spaces for extra cards at the end of each category, but when those spaces run out, you still have to completely reorganize the binder to make new spaces. My point here is, it seems to me that to collect cards, you have to constantly reorganize and re-sort each and every binder as you add new cards to your collection. And, frankly, this seems a lot more stressful than fun. People have suggested just putting cards into little bags, but since the cards rub up against each other in the bags, they aren't going to stay in mint condition and they're all going to lose value... Is there anything I could do to make this a little less stressful and a little more fun?

 

[neoshai]

My 2 little brothers both have a carddex or well, are making one.
My mom helped out a lot, took us a few weeks to go through everything, make sure we didn't miss anything and of course we had to redo parts of the dex over and over because one or two cards were missplaced.
We then started to put them per generation and start with the starters every time instead of attaching them all after one another.
So instead of going Mew straight into Chikorita, we stopped at Mew and started a new 9-pocket page with Chikorita. Had to do this twice XD

I think it might be best to find a different way than putting them alphabetically because as you said: every time you get new ones that share letters or come in front of one, you need to redo it all.
Find a way that doesn't force you to redo everything every time you get new cards. Following a set is what most collectors seem to do.
I personally only collect cards I like so my collection is just filled with Full arts and cards from Pok?mon I really like (Gardevoir mainly XD).
You can always put them all in types but ignore their alphabetical order.
Everyone has their own way, it's a rather difficult question you ask tbh XD