Packing and Taking Stock of 1000+ Cards

[Kenddrick]

Hi Guys!

I met a fellow LOTR:TCG player today. He sold me his entire collection of commons and uncommons for USD35. I think it's pretty worth it. Anyway, right now I have stacks and stacks of cards beside me. I've already sorted them out via their cultures. Now comes the tough part of counting how many copies I have of each card and so forth. The card count stands at more than a thousand. The guy who said it to me told me "thousand at least".
Anyone with ideas on how to make stock taking easier? 1000+ cards can really do damage to my brain.

Cheers,
Kenddrick

[SomeRandomDude]

I'd then break it down into sets and then you can break it down into individual cards.

The collectors info at the bottom is like set number/rarity/card number, i.e 15C108. So you can take the 15 (which is The Hunters set number) and group all the cards from that set together, then all the cards that are multiple copies will automatically go to that set. From there, much easier to sort them by individual card.

That's what I'd do, at least.  I did, actually, all my cards are sorted by culture and collector number. All my friends think I'm OCD cuz i also sort my CDs by artist in alphabetical order and then by release date within artists.

[Kenddrick]

Oh for me I split them via their cultures, then sort them out via their twilight costs.  It's been 6 straight hours of packing cards for me, and I just crossed the halfway mark.

Updated: Now I'm left with the Sauron pile. It's been ten hours of card packing.  Looking at the pile of cards left to pack (150 ++,maybe more) simply makes me sick. I am going to take a well deserved sleep and start on the Sauron pile tomorrow. 

[Gil-Estel]

All my cards are sorted at culture and split into uncommon and common. So for example I have the culture series 1-18 in 1 row, all devided. It is a lot work to accomplish, but it is so worth the effort. Finding cards is so easy that way.

[Elessar's Socks]

For deckbuilding purposes I organize them by culture, then by deck list order (roughly by permanence--companion/minion, ally, follower, artifact, possession, condition, event), and then by alphabetical order. Sites are divided by format/block and then by Shadow number.

I'd go nuts sleeving a thousand cards at one go. I use pieces of a sandwich bag cut the width of a sleeve, inserted maybe a quarter-inch in, and folded back so they won't slide in with the card. All to form a smooth pocket that won't catch on a corner--but it takes AGES to sleeve.