Inside the Pack: Card Displays

For most of my collecting life, my cards weren’t much to look at. I collected what made me happy and what I could afford. This typically resulted in set collections and player collections. While I have loved every minute of supercollecting Chris Coghlan and Alex Faedo, they aren’t players who are all that befitting of putting on display.

I also focused on collecting Brooklyn Dodgers cards — mainly Duke Snider, but also Sandy Koufax, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, and anyone else I could get my hands on. But my budget limitations meant the cards were either modern in nature or beat-up vintage that wasn’t easy on the eyes.

Over the past few years, however, my collection has grown to include some really cool and interesting cards. I did with those cards what I had been doing with my cards for decades: I put them in a box. They lived with the rest of my collection in a cardboard entombment, seeing the light only when I felt an urge to stare at them. As I added more exciting cards to my collection, this became less and less practical for several reasons. Any time I wanted to see my cards I had to walk over to my box, flip through the cards, pull a card out, and hold it while staring at it like some kind of lunatic, standing in the middle of my office looking at a piece of cardboard. Equally as important of a problem was that my box was nearly full.

There was only one solution to both of my problems: display my cards. I had never done this before — again, because I didn’t used to have anything I deemed worthy of display. The first step was figuring out where to display my cards. I have two cabinet tops in my room that didn’t have any function other than collecting dust. I couldn’t decide which of them to display the cards on, so I went with both.

The next step was figuring out how to display the cards. After some digging around, I landed on BCW 2-piece plastic card stands. There were several things I really liked about this product, namely:

• The backs are adjustable, meaning you can change the angle at which cards are displayed and can display items with a variety of thicknesses.
• The stands are low-profile and don’t impede the card itself.
• They’re way cheaper than I ever could have imagined. While you can buy groups of 5 for about $6 on eBay, Amazon has a box of 20 for $9.99. If you’re a Prime member, it ships free. Mine arrived in less than 24 hours.

These little guys basically changed my life overnight. With no setup required other than snapping the back and bottom pieces together, you can have your cards displayed in no time. I did my displays without my wife even knowing — no small undertaking! She was pretty blown away by the way they looked.

Of course, these stands aren’t the only way to display cards. I’ve seen some really neat glass shelving units used as display cases, with lights to show illuminate the cards. Some folks use frames to display cards by hanging them on the wall. While I didn’t have room for another display case, I did consider going the frame route, but ultimately liked the easy accessibility of my cards on the shelf.

I can’t recommend displaying your cards highly enough. In the span of a week I’ve looked at my cards dozens more times than I would have otherwise, and I’m happier every time I do.

I’d love to see any card displays you may have! Please comment below with pictures or descriptions!