I have no idea how to create pages but I'll figure it out eventually godammit

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Protect those oddballs - Allen and Ginter N43s

It's time to protect those oddballs again. Last time, I discussed a storage and display option for one of Allen & Ginter's boxtoppers, the Cabinet card  This time, let's do the same for the other boxtopper, the N43. The term N43 refers to the American Card Catalog designation for the original 1889 Allen & Ginter The World's Champions large sized card set. These cards are slightly larger than your standard baseball card a 2 7/8 by 3 1/4 inches in size. Since these cards are just about the only ones in tis size there isn't a card page designed for them. I've found that the four-pocket 3 1/2 x 5 1/4 pages work well with this set:



Ok, so there's a whole lot of empty space up there in those pages. I don't mind all that much because the 3 1/2 inch width keeps the cards fairly snug in the page and at 4 per page you can fit a 15 card set into 4 pages. While I have taken an Xacto knife to plastic sheets before to customize them, I don't recommend doing it for this set. This is why:


The pockets just aren't big enough to fit two N43s in them , the top one pokes out of the sleeve and covers up the one above it. I suppose if you were adventurous, you could customize a one pocket page into a  six pocket page and get the 15 card set into 3 pages, but that's a lot of work to cut down one page.Take the easy route and just get the 4-pockets.

2 comments:

cynicalbuddha said...

I think the 4 pockets are also called postcard pages, and the postcard top loaders work well with this set too if your just looking to store them and not worried about displaying them. They also work well for other oversized oddballs, like early 80's donruss Action All-Stars oversized cards and MSA disc from the 70's, ect.

GCA said...

I'm on an eternal quest to find six-pocket pages that aren't three across by two downs, but the opposite - three rows of two slots that are 3¼" square. I know they're plausible, since 6½" x 9 3/4 would fit on a regular 8½ x 11 page. I've only seen them once.
They would fit the N43s six to a page as well as my original inspiration, the mid-70s Isaly's (et al) discs.
Anyone know where to get them?