Passing Along Some Info

A few weeks ago, I received this message in one of my online groups from a long-time trading buddy named Tom:

"Hey gang,
 
I was at Staples today & saw their 10-pocket plastic pages designed to hold business cards. I took a close look & thought they looked pretty similar to the '51 & '52 Bowman card sizes, so I picked up a 10-pack & brought it home - and lo & behold, the '51 & '52 Bowman cards fit perfectly in the pockets.

I'm sure someone has already discovered this - but just in case you haven't & are looking for pages for the little guys, stop by your local office supply store. The ones I picked up are PVC free, latex free, acid free, archival quality."


I'll admit I was intrigued. All this time, I had been using standard 9-pocket pages for my 1951 and '52 Bowman cards, which never looked right. While I was able to track down some 12-pocket pages down for 1948-'50 Bowman cards several years ago, I never was able to find a better way to store the slightly taller cards from the next two years.


So, I went to my local store (which was Office Depot) and picked up a pack of 10 sheets ($3.99, which is probably able to be had for cheaper elsewhere). And Tom was right, the cards fit perfectly. And I made another discovery: my 1951 Topps cards fit the sheets as well. In all, seven 10-packs are just enough to give you a free space for each card from '51-'52 Bowman and '51 Topps Red and Blue Back sets with no pages left over. However, 1975 Topps Minis are still too big for them, so I still need to find a sheet than holds them better.


Even more to the point, I was able to salvage a bunch of 9-pocket pages for later use and even re-used the packaging to store some magazines I wanted to archive. That's always a good thing, but it helps the sting of paying $4 for each package.


So thanks, Tom. Hopefully, others can find the information useful.

Added 12/18:

When writing out this post, I treid to get some "before and after" scans to show the difference but my scanner just couldn't show the clear pages well. As it turns out, Dayf over at Cardboard Junkie took my advice and did a great job of that.

Check out his post.