I'm a long time player (fifth dawn) that has decided to finally get my cards organized again.
They used to be kept in great shape sorting by standard and non-standard and by colors, but since my collection has grown and I've moved this system no longer works. Unfortunately I'm now stuck with the daunting task of organizing this all.
I'm hoping to accomplish four goals:
A) Make physical deck building easier.
Because I have a large collection I often play host to others playing my decks or using my cards to build decks. My physical collection needs to be easier to manage and build from for myself and others, as well as any new people I introduce to the game.
B) A digital version of my collection.
I'm hoping to have a fully digital way of tracking the cards I have, building decks, finding out prices of cards and being able to manage my entire collection digitally so I know what I have and what I need and etc.
C) Storing and Maintaining Decks and Decklists.
Ideally I'd love to have a way to store decks physically that keeps them organized, easily accessible and capable of having short 'inserts'. Similar to how an intro deck comes with the 'how to play' and 'upgrading the deck' I'd love to manage a simple fold-in that let's people know what the deck they have in their hand does and what it can do. A task I often face is opening and closing deck boxes in an attempt to find a certain deck because one got switched around just to explain the deck myself and have a friend or family member no longer want to play the deck.
D) Maximize my fun.
I don't often get to play magic but when I do I love it. I'm often brainstorming or building decks in preparation for getting to play but sometimes it strikes me when someone is over or I want to build a deck so that someone can try it. Because of how hazardous and convoluted the system is right now I can often spend a portion of our playing time just trying to find the last copy of a card to make a deck.
I please invite anyone and everyone to offer advice to my problems if they can. I've read and researched but most articles or threads I find are old or don't really help me or my system. I have a large number of fat pack and holiday gift boxes as well as a binder or two and a whole bookshelf to dedicate. I just need help with where to go physically to meet my needs, especially with my decks.
As far as digital goes the only program I've found I like is Magic Assistant and I can't seem to figure it out. As soon as I do I find another issue I need to fix.
For anyone who can help or offer me advice, Thanks in advance!
Have an organized collection of cards, many people use one of the following or some combination thereof:
Grouped by sets (then collector number, or color, and/or rarity, etc.)
Group by staples (then color, and/or rarity, etc.)
If you're storing decks in deck boxes, you can label the boxes. Alternatively, store decks in longer boxes, like those long, plain white boxes that all the stores carry. You can put dividers between the decks, with labels to indicate what deck as well as a decklist that goes with each deck. And of course have a document/database/something electronically that tracks all your decks as well.
D) Maximize my fun.
See suggestion for A~C. I think if you're a point where everything is organized, then you can minimize wasted time and maximize fun time
What works for me:
1. Cards in complete sets by collector's number, in binders, chronological order on shelves. Sets are mostly complete, minus checked-out and missing cards.
2. Extra cards, grouped by sets and color in those 5000ct monster boxes. Not tracked...way too many cards, many of which are non-playables.
3. Most staples in their own boxes. Separated by rarity and color.
4. Completed/near-complete decks, with decklists and deck names in boxes.
5. Digital collection tracking for (1), (3), (4) as well as a check-in/check-out system so I know which cards are not in the binder sets and are 'checked out', i.e. put into a deck or in a staples box This also allows you to know which decks are missing cards, sb cards etc. so you can quickly re-allocate cards from one deck to another if going to an event.
Btw, I do all of my 'brewing' electronically via Cockatrice and once I settle upon a decklist, it's pretty darn quick to put a deck together since I know where the cards are. This part alone may save a lot of time if you're not doing it already but it's not going to help with the organization much...
Buy a bunch of Holiday Gift Boxes. They come with boosters! ;P
But really, I've heard other discussions about organizing huge quantities of cards and there's the option of a drawer chest. It's kind of like a filing cabinet, but with many narrow drawers that you can label. Each probably holds 300-500 cards or so, and you can group them by anything you like. Personally most of my collection is in three holiday gift boxes, but if I expand to need a fourth or fifth, a set of wooden drawers might be better. Such an item would last longer than those thin cardboard gift boxes anyway.
A very interesting question this. My solution for a collection of about the same sizes is this.
First decision - I didnt need 200 giant growths! Basically I decided that I would only keep a playset of each card - I am a player, not collector, so I chose the coolest art that I liked and ditched the rest.
Once I had done this, I shelled out for about 5000 budget sleaves - if you buy in bulk like this you get a pretty good deal.
I store the cards with 1 playset (4 cards) per sleave. This means that you can easily flip through the cards without damaging them, and you have only 1 card effectively for multiples. Some cards I kept more than one playset if it seemed a good idea. Mana leak, lightning bolt, etc.
Having done this (which took me about 3 weeks after work) I then got some heavy weight white cardstock and cut some dividers which stood about 12mm / .5 inch higher than the tops of the sleaves standing vertically, and placed them in the 5000 card boxes (origionally 3 but now almost 4).
It is up to you how you choose to divide them. My system is by colour/Type/CMC. The colours are colourless, Black, Blue, White, Green, Red, Hybrid, Gold, Land. A colour is laid out with the following divisions:
Land is broken down as : Fetch, 3+colour mana, 2 colour mana x 10 sections, monocolour x 5 sections, Colourless (I have yet to figure out the best way to sort this category out as it is a bit of a mess), Basic lands (I have about 200 of each of the John Avon Zendicar lands which I use for my decks).
Artifacts are divided up into artifacts, artifact creatures and equipment.
It takes quite a bit of work, and a not insignificant cost outlay, but it is fairly easy to maintain once you have set it in motion.
I started playing about a year before you did and have been collecting steadily since, and when I decided to get it all in shape I found the best was with binders. 3" D-ring binders from Staples and plenty of them. They take up a bit more room, but I find that my wife is much more tolerant of me taking up most of a small bookcase with labeled neat binders than stacks of boxes. The really nice thing about them is that when you have a half idea in your head leafing through binders can be a great way to think of creative solutions for a deck. It took time, but I just did it in front of the TV at night for a few months and it was done.
You're going to have to define what 'large' is. To a dealer, that could be a million cards (or more). To an average player, 10,000 may be a lot. At one point in time, I owned a little under 200k cards, which is more than any person who isn't a vendor needs. It took me about 3 months to organize it all. I did it by set, then by color and name. It was about 600 pounds worth of cards, so not exactly easy to do. Recording what I had digitally was not feasible. I'm just one person, and the effort was simply not worth it. I did not care how many granger guildmages I had, but I could probably safely assume it was more than a playset. Keeping track of rares is a much simpler process, which I took care of with an excel spreadsheet.
Oh, and for the record, sleeving up bulk is one of the most infuriating things ever. I once bought a collection where every single card was individually sleeved, and it took me hours to get them all desleeved so they could be sorted properly. It's just not worth the time or effort, and the convenience of having unplayable cards sleeved means nothing to me. I keep a playset of all standard commons and uncommons in several big binders, and rares in another one. Once I have 9th edition sea eagles sorted away, I don't suspect they will ever see the light of day again so there is no reason to waste time and money in putting them in a sleeve. Stuff I may use, such as a pile of lightning bolts, all get squirrelled away separately. The ratio to playable to unplayable cards is probably 1:100, so that's not that hard.
I've been slowly organizing my cards over the past month or so. I bought 7 Holiday Gift boxes, which turned out not to be enough initially. I devoted one box to each of the recent blocks (which I had enough Limited fodder to need a full box for), one to Core Sets, and a couple to older cards. In the process of sorting through all of the cards, I organized them by collector's # within each set and removed any copies beyond a playset, since I doubt I'd ever need any more than that for anything that isn't already in an EDH deck or my cube. Exceptions were made for unusually strong commons/uncommons.
This allowed me to devote a holiday box per block plus its trailing core set, and to get rid of ~5k-6k cards (so far, I still have to go through my original-border box).
Concur that keeping track of bulk digitally isn't feasible, just sort them in large boxes and most of them won't be seen again If cards are organized by complete sets, then you'll know if you have any specific bulk card, which is useful when building a cube, EDH etc. It also makes digital asset tracking easier in that you can write '1x Magic 2014' instead of listing out ~250 cards. Other than that, not much point in recording bulk cards > 4. Concur that sleeved bulk is annoying and totally unnecessary.
If you split all your cards by sets then alphabetically and go on a website like deckbox.org to enters how many copies of a card in a given set you have, the process of digitally storing your collection shouldn't be so long. I agree that there is no reason to sleeve cards you won't play unless they're valuable.
You want to organize your cards for playing, right? Then I suggest the following.
(1) Find a card catalog. These are hard to come by, but you can get some cheap ones on Amazon that were made for CDs and will store cards. If you're lucky, you can score one from an old library. The ones will pull-out drawers half way up are amazing because you can park yourself in front of it and use the little desk for filing or deck building. Be warned, it takes some time to find these; I was looking for four years before I finally snagged one. But oh, oh it is sweet. Other options might include getting a lingerie or jewelry chest with drawers the right size and building your own dividers within them. The card catalog is best, though, since you can put labels on the drawers.
(2) Sort by color, then FUNCTION. I cannot stress this enough. If you like to brew, you don't want to organize the cards as if you were going to sell them at a store. Find a way that makes sense to break cards down by their function. I have categories for Black-Removal-Creature (this includes things like Nekkratal) and Black-Removal-Other, for example. Some colors get categories others do not. Blue, for example, has Blue-Countermagic, and Blue-Bounce. White has White-Weenies (including token and anthem effects). Lands have Land-Nonbasic-Acceleration (Sol lands, etc), Land-Nonbasic-Multicolored, and Land-Nonbasic-Utility. Whatever you choose to do, the goal is that you want to be able to grab a card to fill a particular FUNCTION in your brews, and to browse around cards that fill a similar niche to spur your creativity.
I have boxes for shoes and put the cards in them (i usually buy a new pair of shoes each 6 months, so thats mostly enough space for a new set of cards) and store all the boxes under my bed, which has plenty of space for that kind of stuff. Thats for all the commons/uncommons from drafts and other products.
I pre-sort anything that looks remotely playable and put them in sleeves of packs and store them in its own "playable" box.
Rares i put the Holiday Boxes with the Seperators sorted by color and sleeve them in playsets. The real expensive stuff i store in folders, as they tend to be the actual "playable" ones anyway.
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I do that kind of sorting each month and its working totally well.
Any cards in am going to trade, especially expensive cards, i put in a Excel sheet, with language and just feed it the prices which is doing very well to see some random cards "spike" up in price (thats even the case for commons and uncommons like Serum Visions, Inquisition of Kozilek, Remand and such cards) ; sometimes you just finds tons of them in the draft piles, as you just keept them under your bed ;P
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Having the Google Sheets around is also great to check if you have a card to trade simply at your home, can save money and time.
Sorting the cards in detail might be worth it for some people, i just cant do it and i hate doing it, so i just dont.
Biggest deal is to put cards in playsets of cheap sleeves, they cost pretty much nothing and its a gigantic help if you know you have 4 of each card in the sleeve and not searching every 1 of them AND it protects the cards from the most basic damage from storage (which can be quite a thing if the cards get as expensive as some commons/uncommons actual did, ABSOLUTELY worth the cost of the sleeves).
You want to organize your cards for playing, right? Then I suggest the following.
(1) Find a card catalog. These are hard to come by, but you can get some cheap ones on Amazon that were made for CDs and will store cards. If you're lucky, you can score one from an old library. The ones will pull-out drawers half way up are amazing because you can park yourself in front of it and use the little desk for filing or deck building. Be warned, it takes some time to find these; I was looking for four years before I finally snagged one. But oh, oh it is sweet. Other options might include getting a lingerie or jewelry chest with drawers the right size and building your own dividers within them. The card catalog is best, though, since you can put labels on the drawers.
There is a long time poster on MTGS that has done exactly that. It is an expensive fantasy, but one I keep in the back of my mind for "just in case" I come across one that is a great deal.
(2) Sort by color, then FUNCTION. I cannot stress this enough. If you like to brew, you don't want to organize the cards as if you were going to sell them at a store. Find a way that makes sense to break cards down by their function. I have categories for Black-Removal-Creature (this includes things like Nekkratal) and Black-Removal-Other, for example. Some colors get categories others do not. Blue, for example, has Blue-Countermagic, and Blue-Bounce. White has White-Weenies (including token and anthem effects). Lands have Land-Nonbasic-Acceleration (Sol lands, etc), Land-Nonbasic-Multicolored, and Land-Nonbasic-Utility. Whatever you choose to do, the goal is that you want to be able to grab a card to fill a particular FUNCTION in your brews, and to browse around cards that fill a similar niche to spur your creativity.
I tried this at one point but magic cards are rarely so well defined, and it made things more complicated. I think it works for you because it is how you mentally catalog MTG cards, but for me it is more "historical" in nature. My point is that the best way to organize cards in a collection will always be the way that is closest to the way you mentally recall cards.
Incidentally, my organization is this:
2x 1.5" zipper binders- Bulk rare spells.
2x 1.5" zipper binders- Modern cards I am likely to build with
2x 1.5" zipper binders- EDH constructed staples
1x 1.5" zipper binder- Non-basic and full art lands
1x 1.5" zipper binder- Current set (organized by #)
(All of the above are organized simply by color then alphabetically.)
2x 3" D-ring binders for each color of spells that do not fit into one of the above binders.
1x 3" D-ring binder for colorless and Artifact spells.
1x 3" D-ring binder for Multi-color spells
(All of the above are organized by supertype and then alphabetically.)
I also have some boxes of stuff that I am messing with at any given time or that I have not put away yet. All of my binders have standard nine-slot binder pages and I put no more than 4x of a given card per window. In most cases I only keep four of a card and bulk the rest, but there are some cards (like Sakura-Tribe Elder) that I will always want several play sets of.
AS far as my collection goes I have roughly 32 fat pack boxes and four holiday gift boxes of cards, so roughly around 26.000 cards in those boxes + decks, a binder and a large box of cards I just purchased when I bought someone's collection off them.
So I'd deem it *large* compared to most people I know but for more serious and long time players i'm sure sure it isn't that much to handle.
I don't like binders for the most part because I hate having to pop cards in and out of sleeves all the time. I also don't enjoy the white storage boxes. Something about those sit weird with me and I don't know why.
Regardless I've started making my own dividers and organizing them by set. I'm hoping to do this with every set except maybe keep the rares from the sets in a folder instead. Still sort them by color, #, etc. but have the sleeves labeled for the card so I can just pop them in and out when I get them/trade for them/put them in a deck, etc.
As far as deck boxes go I only have a few Ultrapro and mainly fat pack deck boxes. I really enjoy the fat pack deck boxes but they can be flimsy, provide me no use for my commander decks and I wish they had a slot for a name on them.
AS far as organizing my collection digitally goes after reading some of the comments i'm not sure if I want to do it or not.
I'd love to have a digital record of my collection in case something ever happens or if I'd like the ability to trade, deck build, etc. and have my numbers and cards on call. Ideally I want a program that lets me keep a simple record of how many copies I have of a card and if it's promo/foil/foreign language/etc. I'd also like to be able to put cards in decks on the program and have them actually leave my collection instead of just creating a separate instance or something similar.
Overall it's a daunting task but one I think I can easily accomplish given the time. My problem is that I've no idea a good way to go about storing tokens, how to keep track of playables or in progress decks, how to keep *maybe cards*, etc. Sorting by set is awesome because I've got a good memory for cards and their effects and the set them come from. Usually when I say I want to build 'x deck' I know most of the cards that use X and can find them if it's sorted by set.
It's just making it functional I have the problem with now than so much making it collectible sorted.
Any suggestions for those issues and a program that doesn't have those issues or? (I'm going to try looking up the vault tomorrow/this weekend coming.)
I can see how some people like it but I still think something like this looks just as good (from http://mtgcollectionbuilder.com/):
Btw, the site I got this pic from also has binder art for all his sets for those of you who are into using binders like myself And yes, it's got an online app for organizing collections! [never heard of it, never used it but I can see it's built to utilize tcgplayer's pricing engine so might be worth looking into it]
Anyway, just want to mention one additional (and supremely important) reason to have a digital record of your collection is for insurance purposes. If you have a 26k card collection, it's likely worth something and having a digital record will help your claim if something were to happen to it. You might need this regardless when you first get insurance.
Regarding sets vs function: I've got the memory of a goldfish so oftentimes I don't know a card exists until I look it up in Gatherer. I've also built enough EDH decks to want cards in sets because otherwise it can take forever searching for those otherwise-unplayable cards that are never going to be in your (or anybody else's) "staples" box whereas if it's in sets you can quickly find them. Staples though should definitely be out of binders and in separate boxes (and marked as such in your digital collection) for quick access.
Actually, the person on these forums that has that set up has a genuine card catalog repurposed (I believe) from a school library. HERE is an example that is clearly at a shop, and there is a shop around here that has something similar, but I have seen personal collections in them too.
It is an ideal as far as I'm concerned, but I obviously do agree that well organized and maintained binders are clearly quite presentable.
RE Memory- I am a 40 year old sober recovering addict with ADD, so my memory is ... and I really like pasta. I am better at function than set, so if I am making a black EDH deck and I want to really push black I might remember a black card that made only black cards playable, and then I would conclude that it must be a permanent and was not a creature, so it must be an enchantment. I will likely have forgotten the name but my memory is very visual so I can leaf through a black binder in the enchantment section and be pretty confidant that I will spot the card without having to read all of them. Then I smack my head and realize that I have played Contamination enough times that I must be a moron for forgetting it.
That is just an example- in reality Contamination is of course in my EDH constructed binder though even providing an example like this when it was an obvious card I still forgot the name and wrote Contagion in this post twice. There is just no way I will remember it is from Urza's Saga. I am better with sets that were contemporary to when I was playing, but I still will have trouble at times.
I use Decked Builder for organizing my collection digitally. I have it on iPad and my Mac and the card camera helps adding cards to the collection.
Works for testing deck ideas too.
I store mostly in fat pack boxes because the cards don't bend/warp as much as they do in the white cardboard boxes. I am a digital player and collect paper, and have collected stamps for a while. That means I care about keeping the cards at their highest quality. Paper needs to breathe and so I shy away from tight packaging. If you see how old books are kept, sometimes the books are facing with the pages out and the binding in, and that is done to let the paper breathe over the centuries. Magic is a really young hobby, and stamps can be from the 1840s. Also, I don't keep any sealed product. Open it all or risk the cardboard degrading a lot. We don't have 100 year old booster packs yet, but I bet you opening them will be as joyful as drinking from a 100 year old bottle of wine that is just pure vinegar.
I agree that sleeves are terrible. They allow you to view the cards much more easily, but there is always a reason to take cards out and put cards in, and that nicks the cards in small ways, but that will be obvious after you have done it to the same card a dozen times. I sleeve all non-commons and keep all commons in small bunches separated by bunches of sleeved non-commons. The deckbuilder toolkits are surprisingly good for storage, and I don't mind buying a few more than is reasonable for playing.
I stay away from foils as a collector. I don't even want to imagine what a 100 year old foil will look like if a three year old foil looks like crap almost 100 percent of the time.
I agree that sleeves are terrible. They allow you to view the cards much more easily, but there is always a reason to take cards out and put cards in, and that nicks the cards in small ways, but that will be obvious after you have done it to the same card a dozen times. I sleeve all non-commons and keep all commons in small bunches separated by bunches of sleeved non-commons.
I sleeve all foils and all cards that are worth greater than or equal to $5 in KMC perfect fits. Not only is the plastic softer than regular sleeves (so they don't nick cards) but since they fit inside a regular sleeve there is almost no reason to ever take them out. I don't particularly like foils, but they are good for trades and selling if in good condition. They, however, are so easy to scratch that I keep them sleeved and the tight fit of perfect fits keeps them from warping.
I agree that sleeves are terrible. They allow you to view the cards much more easily, but there is always a reason to take cards out and put cards in, and that nicks the cards in small ways, but that will be obvious after you have done it to the same card a dozen times. I sleeve all non-commons and keep all commons in small bunches separated by bunches of sleeved non-commons.
I sleeve all foils and all cards that are worth greater than or equal to $5 in KMC perfect fits. Not only is the plastic softer than regular sleeves (so they don't nick cards) but since they fit inside a regular sleeve there is almost no reason to ever take them out. I don't particularly like foils, but they are good for trades and selling if in good condition. They, however, are so easy to scratch that I keep them sleeved and the tight fit of perfect fits keeps them from warping.
I meant 3 by 3 sleeve sheets...not single sleeves, my bad.
Actually, the person on these forums that has that set up has a genuine card catalog repurposed (I believe) from a school library.
Yep, that's very similar to what I was able to find eventually. Just troll Craig's List and university auctions for years, and you might find one. Don't bother checking retail prices or eBay; honest-to-goodness card catalogs can run you close to $1,000.00 or more that way. I just got lucky finally and got one off of someone who had picked one up while working at a college awhile back.
I investigated the CD holder version on Amazon that you posted before picking it up. According to my reckoning, it would work but it doesn't hold a ton of cards. The drawers are CD-sized, so you can fit two rows of cards, but are very shallow. A real catalog is two feet deep or more, allowing lots of storage.
What I've decided to do for the time being until I get something more permanent (such as a card catalog) is to organize my cards by set.
I'm going to put all of the common/uncommon cards in boxes, organized by set and collector's #.
Rares and Mythic rares I am going to handle differently.
I am making 'block' binders.
For example, I'll have a Return to Ravnica block binder. In that binder I will put, starting with RTR, all the rares and mythic rares I own for the set and then I will move directly on to the next set. As i'm going though i'm going to put paper proxies of card in to the sleeves.
This allows me ease of use when deck building as well as trading, buying, selling and organizing. For exmaple, if i'm doing Magic 2014 my first two cards will be Ajani, Caller of the Pride and Ajani's Chosen. I'll be printing paper proxies of both of those cards. So if I for say don't own any of the chosen and all of my Caller are in decks I don't have to "reorganize" my binder to add them back in. This means that if I want a certain card or i'm deck building as I look through a binder and I see a proxy of a card that would be good for the deck I know I want it and can get it.
This helps me always having a 'copy' of a card for organizing purposes in the rare and up and Common/Uncommon boxes. I'm just looking for duplicates in the boxes or finding the specific sleeve for rares.
In addition to that i'm going to be re-purposing the Fat Pack deck boxes with custom art and deck names written on them and probably hand typing some inserts with the deck list, how it plays, etc.
That helps for new players/new mechanics/etc. when i'm getting someone to play who hasn't used the deck.
After that i'm pretty set other than a reliable way to store foils/tokens.
Any advice on how to store tokens for ease of use? I used to keep them all sorted out by type but then I had to dig through my boxes to find the type I wanted.
As for foils i'm considering there be a common/uncommon folder for them because the Rare^ are going in their block folders. I don't want to put common/uncommon foils in the box sense they seem to get destroyed so easy by moisture, heat, sunlight, staring at them too long, etc. lol
Finally, does anyone know where I can get some good proxies for my binders? I don't want the actual art proxies. I want it clear I *don't* have the card, just that I have the slot for it.
I'm not sure where now but once upon a time I saw black and white text proxies that I think would be perfect for my binders.
This allows me ease of use when deck building as well as trading, buying, selling and organizing. For exmaple, if i'm doing Magic 2014 my first two cards will be Ajani, Caller of the Pride and Ajani's Chosen. I'll be printing paper proxies of both of those cards. So if I for say don't own any of the chosen and all of my Caller are in decks I don't have to "reorganize" my binder to add them back in. This means that if I want a certain card or i'm deck building as I look through a binder and I see a proxy of a card that would be good for the deck I know I want it and can get it.
This is a very good idea and one I have toyed with, but it is a lot of work that I have not actually put in yet.
I'm a long time player (fifth dawn) that has decided to finally get my cards organized again.
They used to be kept in great shape sorting by standard and non-standard and by colors, but since my collection has grown and I've moved this system no longer works. Unfortunately I'm now stuck with the daunting task of organizing this all.
I'm hoping to accomplish four goals:
A) Make physical deck building easier.
Because I have a large collection I often play host to others playing my decks or using my cards to build decks. My physical collection needs to be easier to manage and build from for myself and others, as well as any new people I introduce to the game.
B) A digital version of my collection.
I'm hoping to have a fully digital way of tracking the cards I have, building decks, finding out prices of cards and being able to manage my entire collection digitally so I know what I have and what I need and etc.
C) Storing and Maintaining Decks and Decklists.
Ideally I'd love to have a way to store decks physically that keeps them organized, easily accessible and capable of having short 'inserts'. Similar to how an intro deck comes with the 'how to play' and 'upgrading the deck' I'd love to manage a simple fold-in that let's people know what the deck they have in their hand does and what it can do. A task I often face is opening and closing deck boxes in an attempt to find a certain deck because one got switched around just to explain the deck myself and have a friend or family member no longer want to play the deck.
D) Maximize my fun.
I don't often get to play magic but when I do I love it. I'm often brainstorming or building decks in preparation for getting to play but sometimes it strikes me when someone is over or I want to build a deck so that someone can try it. Because of how hazardous and convoluted the system is right now I can often spend a portion of our playing time just trying to find the last copy of a card to make a deck.
I please invite anyone and everyone to offer advice to my problems if they can. I've read and researched but most articles or threads I find are old or don't really help me or my system. I have a large number of fat pack and holiday gift boxes as well as a binder or two and a whole bookshelf to dedicate. I just need help with where to go physically to meet my needs, especially with my decks.
As far as digital goes the only program I've found I like is Magic Assistant and I can't seem to figure it out. As soon as I do I find another issue I need to fix.
For anyone who can help or offer me advice, Thanks in advance!
- Nautilak
Have an organized collection of cards, many people use one of the following or some combination thereof:
Grouped by sets (then collector number, or color, and/or rarity, etc.)
Group by staples (then color, and/or rarity, etc.)
B) A digital version of my collection.
When somebody comes out with a good version of this I'd use it too but I haven't seen one so I rolled my own. There's software out there that purports to do this, I just haven't found one that works for me. Some people like Deckbox. I'd give the Vault a try (http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/digital-magic-and-mtg-software/337213-the-vault-v0-8a-31st-aug-2014-deck-collection). I haven't actually used it before but I've used the author's other software and it's superb.
C) Storing and Maintaining Decks and Decklists.
If you're storing decks in deck boxes, you can label the boxes. Alternatively, store decks in longer boxes, like those long, plain white boxes that all the stores carry. You can put dividers between the decks, with labels to indicate what deck as well as a decklist that goes with each deck. And of course have a document/database/something electronically that tracks all your decks as well.
D) Maximize my fun.
See suggestion for A~C. I think if you're a point where everything is organized, then you can minimize wasted time and maximize fun time
What works for me:
1. Cards in complete sets by collector's number, in binders, chronological order on shelves. Sets are mostly complete, minus checked-out and missing cards.
2. Extra cards, grouped by sets and color in those 5000ct monster boxes. Not tracked...way too many cards, many of which are non-playables.
3. Most staples in their own boxes. Separated by rarity and color.
4. Completed/near-complete decks, with decklists and deck names in boxes.
5. Digital collection tracking for (1), (3), (4) as well as a check-in/check-out system so I know which cards are not in the binder sets and are 'checked out', i.e. put into a deck or in a staples box This also allows you to know which decks are missing cards, sb cards etc. so you can quickly re-allocate cards from one deck to another if going to an event.
Btw, I do all of my 'brewing' electronically via Cockatrice and once I settle upon a decklist, it's pretty darn quick to put a deck together since I know where the cards are. This part alone may save a lot of time if you're not doing it already but it's not going to help with the organization much...
But really, I've heard other discussions about organizing huge quantities of cards and there's the option of a drawer chest. It's kind of like a filing cabinet, but with many narrow drawers that you can label. Each probably holds 300-500 cards or so, and you can group them by anything you like. Personally most of my collection is in three holiday gift boxes, but if I expand to need a fourth or fifth, a set of wooden drawers might be better. Such an item would last longer than those thin cardboard gift boxes anyway.
EDIT: maybe something like this? http://www.plasticstorageboxeswithlids.com/plastic-storage-drawers/plastic-parts-storage-with-64-drawers/ =
UBR Sedris
RG Omnath, Locus of Rage
UB The Scarab God
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer
WU Dragonlord Ojutai
First decision - I didnt need 200 giant growths! Basically I decided that I would only keep a playset of each card - I am a player, not collector, so I chose the coolest art that I liked and ditched the rest.
Once I had done this, I shelled out for about 5000 budget sleaves - if you buy in bulk like this you get a pretty good deal.
I store the cards with 1 playset (4 cards) per sleave. This means that you can easily flip through the cards without damaging them, and you have only 1 card effectively for multiples. Some cards I kept more than one playset if it seemed a good idea. Mana leak, lightning bolt, etc.
Having done this (which took me about 3 weeks after work) I then got some heavy weight white cardstock and cut some dividers which stood about 12mm / .5 inch higher than the tops of the sleaves standing vertically, and placed them in the 5000 card boxes (origionally 3 but now almost 4).
It is up to you how you choose to divide them. My system is by colour/Type/CMC. The colours are colourless, Black, Blue, White, Green, Red, Hybrid, Gold, Land. A colour is laid out with the following divisions:
1,2,3,4,5,6+ CMC Creatures, Planeswalkers, 1,2,3,4+ Instants, 1,2,3,4,5+ Sorceries, Enchantments, Auras, Artifacts, Artifact creatures.
Land is broken down as : Fetch, 3+colour mana, 2 colour mana x 10 sections, monocolour x 5 sections, Colourless (I have yet to figure out the best way to sort this category out as it is a bit of a mess), Basic lands (I have about 200 of each of the John Avon Zendicar lands which I use for my decks).
Artifacts are divided up into artifacts, artifact creatures and equipment.
It takes quite a bit of work, and a not insignificant cost outlay, but it is fairly easy to maintain once you have set it in motion.
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Oh, and for the record, sleeving up bulk is one of the most infuriating things ever. I once bought a collection where every single card was individually sleeved, and it took me hours to get them all desleeved so they could be sorted properly. It's just not worth the time or effort, and the convenience of having unplayable cards sleeved means nothing to me. I keep a playset of all standard commons and uncommons in several big binders, and rares in another one. Once I have 9th edition sea eagles sorted away, I don't suspect they will ever see the light of day again so there is no reason to waste time and money in putting them in a sleeve. Stuff I may use, such as a pile of lightning bolts, all get squirrelled away separately. The ratio to playable to unplayable cards is probably 1:100, so that's not that hard.
This allowed me to devote a holiday box per block plus its trailing core set, and to get rid of ~5k-6k cards (so far, I still have to go through my original-border box).
Draft my cube! (630 cards)
(1) Find a card catalog. These are hard to come by, but you can get some cheap ones on Amazon that were made for CDs and will store cards. If you're lucky, you can score one from an old library. The ones will pull-out drawers half way up are amazing because you can park yourself in front of it and use the little desk for filing or deck building. Be warned, it takes some time to find these; I was looking for four years before I finally snagged one. But oh, oh it is sweet. Other options might include getting a lingerie or jewelry chest with drawers the right size and building your own dividers within them. The card catalog is best, though, since you can put labels on the drawers.
(2) Sort by color, then FUNCTION. I cannot stress this enough. If you like to brew, you don't want to organize the cards as if you were going to sell them at a store. Find a way that makes sense to break cards down by their function. I have categories for Black-Removal-Creature (this includes things like Nekkratal) and Black-Removal-Other, for example. Some colors get categories others do not. Blue, for example, has Blue-Countermagic, and Blue-Bounce. White has White-Weenies (including token and anthem effects). Lands have Land-Nonbasic-Acceleration (Sol lands, etc), Land-Nonbasic-Multicolored, and Land-Nonbasic-Utility. Whatever you choose to do, the goal is that you want to be able to grab a card to fill a particular FUNCTION in your brews, and to browse around cards that fill a similar niche to spur your creativity.
I pre-sort anything that looks remotely playable and put them in sleeves of packs and store them in its own "playable" box.
Rares i put the Holiday Boxes with the Seperators sorted by color and sleeve them in playsets. The real expensive stuff i store in folders, as they tend to be the actual "playable" ones anyway.
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I do that kind of sorting each month and its working totally well.
Any cards in am going to trade, especially expensive cards, i put in a Excel sheet, with language and just feed it the prices which is doing very well to see some random cards "spike" up in price (thats even the case for commons and uncommons like Serum Visions, Inquisition of Kozilek, Remand and such cards) ; sometimes you just finds tons of them in the draft piles, as you just keept them under your bed ;P
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Having the Google Sheets around is also great to check if you have a card to trade simply at your home, can save money and time.
Sorting the cards in detail might be worth it for some people, i just cant do it and i hate doing it, so i just dont.
Biggest deal is to put cards in playsets of cheap sleeves, they cost pretty much nothing and its a gigantic help if you know you have 4 of each card in the sleeve and not searching every 1 of them AND it protects the cards from the most basic damage from storage (which can be quite a thing if the cards get as expensive as some commons/uncommons actual did, ABSOLUTELY worth the cost of the sleeves).
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I tried this at one point but magic cards are rarely so well defined, and it made things more complicated. I think it works for you because it is how you mentally catalog MTG cards, but for me it is more "historical" in nature. My point is that the best way to organize cards in a collection will always be the way that is closest to the way you mentally recall cards.
Incidentally, my organization is this:
2x 1.5" zipper binders- Bulk rare spells.
2x 1.5" zipper binders- Modern cards I am likely to build with
2x 1.5" zipper binders- EDH constructed staples
1x 1.5" zipper binder- Non-basic and full art lands
1x 1.5" zipper binder- Current set (organized by #)
(All of the above are organized simply by color then alphabetically.)
2x 3" D-ring binders for each color of spells that do not fit into one of the above binders.
1x 3" D-ring binder for colorless and Artifact spells.
1x 3" D-ring binder for Multi-color spells
(All of the above are organized by supertype and then alphabetically.)
I also have some boxes of stuff that I am messing with at any given time or that I have not put away yet. All of my binders have standard nine-slot binder pages and I put no more than 4x of a given card per window. In most cases I only keep four of a card and bulk the rest, but there are some cards (like Sakura-Tribe Elder) that I will always want several play sets of.
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AS far as my collection goes I have roughly 32 fat pack boxes and four holiday gift boxes of cards, so roughly around 26.000 cards in those boxes + decks, a binder and a large box of cards I just purchased when I bought someone's collection off them.
So I'd deem it *large* compared to most people I know but for more serious and long time players i'm sure sure it isn't that much to handle.
I don't like binders for the most part because I hate having to pop cards in and out of sleeves all the time. I also don't enjoy the white storage boxes. Something about those sit weird with me and I don't know why.
Regardless I've started making my own dividers and organizing them by set. I'm hoping to do this with every set except maybe keep the rares from the sets in a folder instead. Still sort them by color, #, etc. but have the sleeves labeled for the card so I can just pop them in and out when I get them/trade for them/put them in a deck, etc.
As far as deck boxes go I only have a few Ultrapro and mainly fat pack deck boxes. I really enjoy the fat pack deck boxes but they can be flimsy, provide me no use for my commander decks and I wish they had a slot for a name on them.
AS far as organizing my collection digitally goes after reading some of the comments i'm not sure if I want to do it or not.
I'd love to have a digital record of my collection in case something ever happens or if I'd like the ability to trade, deck build, etc. and have my numbers and cards on call. Ideally I want a program that lets me keep a simple record of how many copies I have of a card and if it's promo/foil/foreign language/etc. I'd also like to be able to put cards in decks on the program and have them actually leave my collection instead of just creating a separate instance or something similar.
Overall it's a daunting task but one I think I can easily accomplish given the time. My problem is that I've no idea a good way to go about storing tokens, how to keep track of playables or in progress decks, how to keep *maybe cards*, etc. Sorting by set is awesome because I've got a good memory for cards and their effects and the set them come from. Usually when I say I want to build 'x deck' I know most of the cards that use X and can find them if it's sorted by set.
It's just making it functional I have the problem with now than so much making it collectible sorted.
Any suggestions for those issues and a program that doesn't have those issues or? (I'm going to try looking up the vault tomorrow/this weekend coming.)
I can see how some people like it but I still think something like this looks just as good (from http://mtgcollectionbuilder.com/):
Btw, the site I got this pic from also has binder art for all his sets for those of you who are into using binders like myself And yes, it's got an online app for organizing collections! [never heard of it, never used it but I can see it's built to utilize tcgplayer's pricing engine so might be worth looking into it]
Anyway, just want to mention one additional (and supremely important) reason to have a digital record of your collection is for insurance purposes. If you have a 26k card collection, it's likely worth something and having a digital record will help your claim if something were to happen to it. You might need this regardless when you first get insurance.
Regarding sets vs function: I've got the memory of a goldfish so oftentimes I don't know a card exists until I look it up in Gatherer. I've also built enough EDH decks to want cards in sets because otherwise it can take forever searching for those otherwise-unplayable cards that are never going to be in your (or anybody else's) "staples" box whereas if it's in sets you can quickly find them. Staples though should definitely be out of binders and in separate boxes (and marked as such in your digital collection) for quick access.
It is an ideal as far as I'm concerned, but I obviously do agree that well organized and maintained binders are clearly quite presentable.
RE Memory- I am a 40 year old sober recovering addict with ADD, so my memory is ... and I really like pasta. I am better at function than set, so if I am making a black EDH deck and I want to really push black I might remember a black card that made only black cards playable, and then I would conclude that it must be a permanent and was not a creature, so it must be an enchantment. I will likely have forgotten the name but my memory is very visual so I can leaf through a black binder in the enchantment section and be pretty confidant that I will spot the card without having to read all of them. Then I smack my head and realize that I have played Contamination enough times that I must be a moron for forgetting it.
That is just an example- in reality Contamination is of course in my EDH constructed binder though even providing an example like this when it was an obvious card I still forgot the name and wrote Contagion in this post twice. There is just no way I will remember it is from Urza's Saga. I am better with sets that were contemporary to when I was playing, but I still will have trouble at times.
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Works for testing deck ideas too.
I agree that sleeves are terrible. They allow you to view the cards much more easily, but there is always a reason to take cards out and put cards in, and that nicks the cards in small ways, but that will be obvious after you have done it to the same card a dozen times. I sleeve all non-commons and keep all commons in small bunches separated by bunches of sleeved non-commons. The deckbuilder toolkits are surprisingly good for storage, and I don't mind buying a few more than is reasonable for playing.
I stay away from foils as a collector. I don't even want to imagine what a 100 year old foil will look like if a three year old foil looks like crap almost 100 percent of the time.
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I meant 3 by 3 sleeve sheets...not single sleeves, my bad.
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Yep, that's very similar to what I was able to find eventually. Just troll Craig's List and university auctions for years, and you might find one. Don't bother checking retail prices or eBay; honest-to-goodness card catalogs can run you close to $1,000.00 or more that way. I just got lucky finally and got one off of someone who had picked one up while working at a college awhile back.
I investigated the CD holder version on Amazon that you posted before picking it up. According to my reckoning, it would work but it doesn't hold a ton of cards. The drawers are CD-sized, so you can fit two rows of cards, but are very shallow. A real catalog is two feet deep or more, allowing lots of storage.
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What I've decided to do for the time being until I get something more permanent (such as a card catalog) is to organize my cards by set.
I'm going to put all of the common/uncommon cards in boxes, organized by set and collector's #.
Rares and Mythic rares I am going to handle differently.
I am making 'block' binders.
For example, I'll have a Return to Ravnica block binder. In that binder I will put, starting with RTR, all the rares and mythic rares I own for the set and then I will move directly on to the next set. As i'm going though i'm going to put paper proxies of card in to the sleeves.
This allows me ease of use when deck building as well as trading, buying, selling and organizing. For exmaple, if i'm doing Magic 2014 my first two cards will be Ajani, Caller of the Pride and Ajani's Chosen. I'll be printing paper proxies of both of those cards. So if I for say don't own any of the chosen and all of my Caller are in decks I don't have to "reorganize" my binder to add them back in. This means that if I want a certain card or i'm deck building as I look through a binder and I see a proxy of a card that would be good for the deck I know I want it and can get it.
This helps me always having a 'copy' of a card for organizing purposes in the rare and up and Common/Uncommon boxes. I'm just looking for duplicates in the boxes or finding the specific sleeve for rares.
In addition to that i'm going to be re-purposing the Fat Pack deck boxes with custom art and deck names written on them and probably hand typing some inserts with the deck list, how it plays, etc.
That helps for new players/new mechanics/etc. when i'm getting someone to play who hasn't used the deck.
After that i'm pretty set other than a reliable way to store foils/tokens.
Any advice on how to store tokens for ease of use? I used to keep them all sorted out by type but then I had to dig through my boxes to find the type I wanted.
As for foils i'm considering there be a common/uncommon folder for them because the Rare^ are going in their block folders. I don't want to put common/uncommon foils in the box sense they seem to get destroyed so easy by moisture, heat, sunlight, staring at them too long, etc. lol
Finally, does anyone know where I can get some good proxies for my binders? I don't want the actual art proxies. I want it clear I *don't* have the card, just that I have the slot for it.
I'm not sure where now but once upon a time I saw black and white text proxies that I think would be perfect for my binders.
Thanks again!
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You wont ever take it out again ...
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I then exported it to a SQL database. It's quite tedious capturing all the cards to the database, but in the end I will know how many cards I have and where they are in my collection.
I am thinking of exporting it to deckbox afterwards.
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