I also would like to hear an experienced person’s opinion. I think the binder storage will also be dependent on what binder you stored them in, and if you sleeved them prior to placing them into a binder.
I have some old binders with cards in them and dust has gotten into the pockets and onto the cards, this may have contributed to damage.
However i’m starting to use pro fit sleeves in ultra pro fit binders where you side load them, this result in tighter packaged cards and hopefully less dust collection.
There’s a lot of variables. If you use a binder that has a ring on it you’re most likely going to have problems of ring dents on the inside cards if they’re viewed many times/the proper attention isn’t used when opening. Even more if you happen to have the binder overflowing because it’ll damage the cards when the binder is being closed.
The next issue you’re going to have is dust settling into the individual pockets of the sleeves. If you store the binder in a closed off area you probably won’t have this issue unless you’re taking the binder out a lot to view. Make sure the closed off area doesn’t have humidity issues otherwise you’ll damage the cards.
After all that you’re going to want to watch out for actually damaging the cards by placing them in and out of the sleeves. The sides of pokemon cards tend to get damaged from repeated sliding.
A lot of the above is the reason PSA grading got so popular, as PSA cases prevent against a lot of the issues, as well as protection from moisture/UV damage/denting that’s nearly impossible to prevent purely with binder storage. If you’re not into PSA grading or don’t value the cards enough to justify the cost of PSA grading your next best would be to use a toploader binder, finally a monster binder where you sleeve each card before inserting them into the pockets, make sure the sleeves are slid from top to bottom to help prevent dust from getting to the card.
Whether a card is worth grading depends on the specific card and should be judged on individually.
A hint would be, you said they “basically” went from pack to binder. That’s a scary word I’ve heard tons of times and rarely has a good outcome. Now if they DID go from pack to binder (and not a sleeve first) and stayed there without further damage from binder rings etc. then there could be a bunch of 9s and 10s in there:)
I’ll need to gather the rest of my collection and catalog them eventually. I have a lot of learning to do. =/ I will try to get a better post up within a month or two. Just hard to find the time to travel home to get the rest of the collection. I will also start browsing the rest of the site to learn what kind of sleeves to get and transfer cards from binders to individual sleeves / protectors.
Thanks for the welcome. I hope to get to know you guys a lot better over time =D!
I have nothing to add onto what has been been said other than welcome! For what it’s worth I haven’t don’t much PSA grading yet, but for other cards I use the reverse sleeve + toploader method and it seems to work well. I’m also very new to this forum and getting back into collecting. There is a wealth of information on the forum and if you’re anything like me you may want to just start seaching things reading through the more popular posts. You’d be amazed at some of the knowledge you can pick up. Anyway, good luck with the collection and looking forward to seeing a future collection post!