Bottom-Loading Pages and Forgotten Phone Calls

There’s just something about slipping cards into nine-pocket pages — lining them up by team, by player, by year. Or however you want. And trying desperately not to nick the corner of a card while doing it. That part took me a while to master.

It’s a little nerdy, and honestly, a little bit therapeutic.

As I started this journey with the binder business — beginning with our Detroit Tigers binder — I kept thinking back to some of my earliest (and funniest) experiences with card binders. Two stories in particular still make me laugh. 

The One Where I Forgot About the Phone

I was about 11, working on organizing my 1981 Topps football cards. I had the cards and the pages spread out across the couch and was kneeling in front of them, totally in the zone.

Then the phone rang (landline, of course). I answered it. A friend of my stepmom’s was on the line and asked to speak with her.

“Oh sure,” I said. “I’ll go get her.”

Yeah… I didn’t do that.

I went right back to my cards and kept loading them into the binder like nothing had happened. I was in binder mode — you don’t just break that kind of focus. A solid half-hour went by before it even occurred to me that I’d left someone hanging on the line.

I ran to the phone again — dead line. She was loooooong gone. (Cue Ernie Harwell voice here.)

I went right back to loading those pages. AGAIN, I said nothing LOL!

A few minutes later, the phone rang once. Same woman. Same request. I answered and casually said, “Oh yeah, sorry about that,” and chuckled. She was not amused.

To this day, I have no idea why that moment sticks in my memory so clearly, but it always makes me laugh.

The Mystery of the Bottom-Loading Pages

In high school, one of my best friends was a guy named Tim. Every year, his aunt bought him the full Topps baseball card set for his birthday. One year, he decided to put the whole thing in a binder.

Almost entirely through the project (792 cards mind you!) he called me — frustrated.

“Chris,” he said, “I can’t figure out how to keep the cards from falling out of my binder. They won’t stay in!”

I asked, “Are they falling out the sides? Like, are you using side-loading pages?”

“No,” he said. “They keep falling out of the bottom. How am I supposed to stand the binder up if the cards keep falling out of the bottom?”

I tried so hard not to laugh. But I just couldn’t help it.

“Tim… there’s no such thing as bottom-loading pages my friend. They’re top-loading.”

There was a long pause. Then he said, “I gotta go,” and hung up.

We never spoke of it again. But 35 years later, I still can’t tell that story without cracking up halfway through and spoiling the punchline.

Why I’m Sharing This

These stories are part of why I started this whole binder thing. Sure, the binders are a massive upgrade to what I have traditionally used— but more than anything, they’re about honoring part of what makes collecting fun in the first place.

It’s not just about the cards. It’s about the quiet moments we get to ourselves and our collections, the goofy mistakes, those damn nicked card corners, and the nostalgia that sticks with you.

Got a binder story of your own? I’d love to hear it.