Today I bought my first binder. I went into the purchase blindly as it was a last minute thought. I purchased a Monster Protectors binder in pink, with 20 pages of 9 pockets, side loading. I would love to hear what brand/type everyone prefers and why. It was on sale so I figured it was a good place to start out with.
My binder is not for trading. I am still fairly new to the game (about 5 months now) and don't have anything I want to trade. If I have cards I don't want, I bring them into one of our LGS and sell them and get credit towards cards I do want. My wishlist is always active and growing! I bought it for my own use, so it will be staying here at home. Not being thumbed through by anyone else or stuffed in a knapsack or anything. I want to put my favourite cards in it, whether they are for future play, cards I rotate in and out of various decks, or just cards I love for the artwork or what they say, regardless of their value, both monetary or in play.
Any suggestions of how I should organize my binder? I want to have some kind of system, but not sure where to start. Just by colours and then by mana cost? A section for that way and another section for beloved cards, maybe at the beginning? Or separate binders for each colour? Help, advise please! I want to get working on this, so I can actually sit down with my binder when watching TV and just flip through it and enjoy my cards to the utmost instead of having them hiding in boxes waiting their turn.
Put cards into it. I normally just put in the cards that are most useful but not currently in a deck. If you stick everything in binders you will run out of space very quickly. It depends on collection size but eventually I would like to have seven binders one for each colour, one for artifacts and one for lands.
So, for the first page I started putting my all my Planeswalkers in by name and leaving several pages open for future ones or Planeswalkers that are presently in decks I am using. Then I tossed in my very small collection of favourite cards from Unhinged and the other one. Forget the name. Eventually these will get moved because I plan to collect a bunch from Unstable when it comes out. I just find them hilarious and a fun part of the collecting side of MTG.
I then started on green. My favourite colour, focusing on elves,dryads and druids, putting them in alphabetical order and leaving some spaces. After that I will start putting in more greens, mostly by either set then mana cost or just set. Or...alphabetical. Maybe set and mana cost. And buy future binders for other colours and do the same thing. I also want one for lands, Legendary stuff, etc. I love looking at my collection this way. So pleasing to the eye and fun to enjoy the artwork. Does this make sense?
If you have cards that form a cycle like the 10 fetchlands, you keep them together to easily find them.
For non-lands i usually put cards together that probably go in the same deck , so if i pull them out, i have the cards together right away (instead of going through all pages and multiple folders).
All "affinity" cards in modern for example can easily go on 2 pages and be visible right away.
I buy a binder per set, just a regular 3 ring binder, and buy a box of 9-up sheets that fit in them. Each pocket I put up to a playset of each card in the set (depends on all I get). Anything more than a playset will either be in my overflow boxes for giving away (commons and uncommons), or in my trade binder (Foils of all types, rares/mythic rares). That way, when I'm building decks (EDH or Standard or Other), I just need to look on Gatherer and I'll know where the cards should be, no matter what rarity.
Back when I first started, I kept rares and cards that were uncommon/common that I wanted to know exactly where they were on hand in them. Boring, bulk stuff I left in a box.
Fast forward a decade or two and now I have a binder for each color, and I still keep rares/mythics and notable uncommon/commons in them.
I also read that the cards should be sleeved because people have found that if they keep their cards in the binders for any length of time, without moving them (6-8 months) the back of the cards stick to the black plastic of the binder and ruin the card. I guess this is a pretty common problem. So should I find clear sleeves for them, and if so, what brand is best? Or should I use my Dragon Shields?
I also read that the cards should be sleeved because people have found that if they keep their cards in the binders for any length of time, without moving them (6-8 months) the back of the cards stick to the black plastic of the binder and ruin the card. I guess this is a pretty common problem. So should I find clear sleeves for them, and if so, what brand is best? Or should I use my Dragon Shields?
If you are looking for clear sleeves specifically DragonShield makes those (in regular or matte styles), but really any sleeves should be fine. I double sleeve all the cards I keep in my "not for trade" binders in DragonShield Matte black sleeves myself (except for the double-faced cards, those get clear DragonShields), but I will freely admit it is probably overkill.
I also read that the cards should be sleeved because people have found that if they keep their cards in the binders for any length of time, without moving them (6-8 months) the back of the cards stick to the black plastic of the binder and ruin the card. I guess this is a pretty common problem. So should I find clear sleeves for them, and if so, what brand is best? Or should I use my Dragon Shields?
Absolutely.... use sleeves. I use a combination of clear inner sleeves with penny sleeves.
It's the plasticizers or flame-retardents agents outgassing. A common plasticizer will cause the plastic to smell like vinyl. You see this with PVC plastics the most and you see it a lot with interactions between different plastics. For example PVC and EPS will attack each other such as power cords (PVC) for electronics stored in styrofoam (really EPS) padding without the little LDPE/HDPE baggie they come with. If your binder sleeves smell like vinyl, toss'em they're junk. It is also exactly why those white or gray game consoles from the 80's and 90's have turned yellow now. The flame retardent outgassed and reacted with whatever whitches brew they threw in.
Plastic break down is unpredictable, especially prior to the recycling markers we put on them now. "Vinyl" PVC plastics usually turn yellow and brittle but I've witnessed some PVC turn to liquid goo. The break down is sometimes unpredictable.
I had many cards in Ultra-Pro binder sleeves since er... 2000 and after 17 years the worst is the pages are hard. Not brittle hard, but not as soft as they used to be. Not one of my cards stuck. I suspect the failure was in my choice of binders, I wasn't as careful in selecting binders and most are suffering the common decomposing PVC experience. I removed most of my collection and they're now in sleeves (polypropylene) and in boxes for better handling. I'm not happy with any of the boxes, but that's a different subject for later.
I like to sort mine by color (I don't bother sorting by mana cost because i'm lazy.)
Though one interesting thing i like to do is sort by flavor. For example, in my white section i keep a copy of Oath of Gideon and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar both on the middle of each page back to back. I also like to do this with my Liliana, while also keeping some copies of various zombies around her. It probably sounds stupid, but it gives me something to do when i'm bored.
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I currently have no idea what i'm doing with my life right now, or ever for that matter.
My binder is not for trading. I am still fairly new to the game (about 5 months now) and don't have anything I want to trade. If I have cards I don't want, I bring them into one of our LGS and sell them and get credit towards cards I do want. My wishlist is always active and growing! I bought it for my own use, so it will be staying here at home. Not being thumbed through by anyone else or stuffed in a knapsack or anything. I want to put my favourite cards in it, whether they are for future play, cards I rotate in and out of various decks, or just cards I love for the artwork or what they say, regardless of their value, both monetary or in play.
Any suggestions of how I should organize my binder? I want to have some kind of system, but not sure where to start. Just by colours and then by mana cost? A section for that way and another section for beloved cards, maybe at the beginning? Or separate binders for each colour? Help, advise please! I want to get working on this, so I can actually sit down with my binder when watching TV and just flip through it and enjoy my cards to the utmost instead of having them hiding in boxes waiting their turn.
or else you'll always be shuffling cards throughout the binder
I then started on green. My favourite colour, focusing on elves,dryads and druids, putting them in alphabetical order and leaving some spaces. After that I will start putting in more greens, mostly by either set then mana cost or just set. Or...alphabetical. Maybe set and mana cost. And buy future binders for other colours and do the same thing. I also want one for lands, Legendary stuff, etc. I love looking at my collection this way. So pleasing to the eye and fun to enjoy the artwork. Does this make sense?
For non-lands i usually put cards together that probably go in the same deck , so if i pull them out, i have the cards together right away (instead of going through all pages and multiple folders).
All "affinity" cards in modern for example can easily go on 2 pages and be visible right away.
Thats the most efficient way for me.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Fast forward a decade or two and now I have a binder for each color, and I still keep rares/mythics and notable uncommon/commons in them.
On the topic of binders specifically, Monster is a brand I don't have personal experience with, but from what I've seen their binders are roughly equivalent to the standard Ultra Pro binder (perhaps a bit nicer), and those are fine but nothing spectacular. Personally I would recommend the Ultimate Guard Xenoskin Zipfolio, the Pirate Lab Summoner Deluxe Trade Binder, or the Legion Dragon Hide Binder.
Absolutely.... use sleeves. I use a combination of clear inner sleeves with penny sleeves.
It's the plasticizers or flame-retardents agents outgassing. A common plasticizer will cause the plastic to smell like vinyl. You see this with PVC plastics the most and you see it a lot with interactions between different plastics. For example PVC and EPS will attack each other such as power cords (PVC) for electronics stored in styrofoam (really EPS) padding without the little LDPE/HDPE baggie they come with. If your binder sleeves smell like vinyl, toss'em they're junk. It is also exactly why those white or gray game consoles from the 80's and 90's have turned yellow now. The flame retardent outgassed and reacted with whatever whitches brew they threw in.
Plastic break down is unpredictable, especially prior to the recycling markers we put on them now. "Vinyl" PVC plastics usually turn yellow and brittle but I've witnessed some PVC turn to liquid goo. The break down is sometimes unpredictable.
I had many cards in Ultra-Pro binder sleeves since er... 2000 and after 17 years the worst is the pages are hard. Not brittle hard, but not as soft as they used to be. Not one of my cards stuck. I suspect the failure was in my choice of binders, I wasn't as careful in selecting binders and most are suffering the common decomposing PVC experience. I removed most of my collection and they're now in sleeves (polypropylene) and in boxes for better handling. I'm not happy with any of the boxes, but that's a different subject for later.
Though one interesting thing i like to do is sort by flavor. For example, in my white section i keep a copy of Oath of Gideon and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar both on the middle of each page back to back. I also like to do this with my Liliana, while also keeping some copies of various zombies around her. It probably sounds stupid, but it gives me something to do when i'm bored.
I currently have no idea what i'm doing with my life right now, or ever for that matter.
And that is why I prefer a 3 ring binder so I can just add pages in when I need to. Don't have to remove cards, just the pages themselves.
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Casual
UBPirate ArtifactsBU