[official]card storage/sorting discussion

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motleyslayer
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Post by motleyslayer » 4 years ago

Here's the the official thread for discussion pertaining to how we store and sort our collections, so please keep any discussion in regards to this to this thread.

I have a binder that I use for trades, as in cards I'm not looking to hang onto for myself. It's one of the Hour of Devastation binders from a few years back. I used to have a separate binder for Commander cards, which I recently combined with this one because both were kind of half full. Usually my trade binders aren't kept too full as I move bulk or stuff I can't see myself using anytime soon into stuff I need

I have a 4x4 zipup binder that I use for my non land playsets that I don't let many people look at unless I need to close a trade or let them borrow something. then I have another 4x4 binder for my lands, which isn't as full as my other one but still a healthy collection of lands. I couldn't have both of these in the same binder due to size so I separated

I then have a 3 ring binder with the pages you can buy a box of 100 of and then a 4x4 binder of commons and uncommons that are playable across all formats so that they're readily available in my room in case anyone needs them. It's kind of gotten out of hand but I've been too lazy to organize more than by colour.

I store the basics that I use in decks in a fat pack box. It's a weird combination of GP Promo basics from last year (which are my favourite) , Unstable basics and BFZ basics

everything else is stored in 800 count boxes

lets see how you store your collections

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The Fluff
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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

I store tradable cards in black binders that I bought years ago, and also in a large card binder that my mom gave me as a gift years ago. They still hold well up to this day.

as for deck boxes. I custom created the deck boxes that I use from thick hard cardboard topped with color paper and plastic cover. They still hold well up to this day as well. Also have one Ultra Pro deck box bought at the store, it's the home of my modern elves deck.
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Post by SquirrelToken » 4 years ago

I keep tradables in a 4x4 binder. Always keep your trade binder full; that way if someone tries to sneak a card out you'll notice very easily. Even if you have to fill it up with junk, keep it full.

Dual lands (not RV duals, just lands that tap for 2 different colors) go in their own binder, sorted by color pair order.

I have one binder per block for sets.

The bulk of my collection is stored in BWC 5500-count Monster Boxes.

Most decks are in smaller BCW boxes - 300-counts, 1000-counts, etc. A few have their own dedicated box, mostly by accident. I'm definitely looking to upgrade my deck storage to something that makes more sense, but I don't quite know what that is yet.

I have one set of decks (my own version of Magic: Game Night) in an Aaron Cain box.

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motleyslayer
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Post by motleyslayer » 4 years ago

SquirrelToken wrote:
4 years ago
I keep tradables in a 4x4 binder. Always keep your trade binder full; that way if someone tries to sneak a card out you'll notice very easily. Even if you have to fill it up with junk, keep it full.
I actually had something similar that come up years ago, I had most of my stuff not for trade in a binder behind me (foolish I know), the person who was looking at them left the table. Someone else yanked a bunch of stuff from the binder and because the binder was so full I was able to identify quickly what went missing. That made getting it back easier

Now I try and keep similar lands together in a binder (such as fetches with fetches, shocks with shocks, whatnot) and spells colour sorted

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

on the people sneaking cards out of the trade binder issue. My cousin had his binder taped on the openings, so it's not easy to sneak a card out. Don't know if it was effective though..
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.H.
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Post by .H. » 4 years ago

I do a binder for every set (that I have cards from) with Ultra-Pro 9 pocket pages.

Here are a couple pictures of the state of the project at this moment.

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I am working on getting the side images done/redone for all of them and filling in a couple of the gaps in sets that don't have binders yet.

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motleyslayer
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Post by motleyslayer » 4 years ago

I wish I had the motivation to better sort cards other than my playsets but I can't care enough to set aside the time. Binders by set always looks really nice though

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Post by Vessiliana » 4 years ago

I have the legendary cards sorted by color in binders. (I collect legends.) The rest of the cards not in decks are separated by color and rarity, and alphabetized (though not within each letter).

So if I want a Naturalize, for instance, I go to the green commons box and look under N.

I have ... a lot of cards.

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Post by motleyslayer » 4 years ago

Vessiliana wrote:
4 years ago
I have the legendary cards sorted by color in binders. (I collect legends.) The rest of the cards not in decks are separated by color and rarity, and alphabetized (though not within each letter).

So if I want a Naturalize, for instance, I go to the green commons box and look under N.

I have ... a lot of cards.

I used to sort cards in boxes by colour as well, but even that was too much effort for me. Which makes looking for stuff even more working when I need to find something

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Post by clariwench » 4 years ago

I bought a Legion Dragon Hide binder and they are now the only ones I'll ever buy! It is so sturdy, feels so high quality, and just looks fantastic.

Most of the cards in it are my promo collection, but I also have my foil Ral collection, JP alt art planeswalkers, SCG player tokens, and Modern Horizons Art Series cards. I feel very confident that they're safe in it!
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Post by Lights_A5 » 4 years ago

I have 2 binders. I have a four binder as well as a 4-pocket binder. I use the 4-pocket one as my $10 or up and then the four binder has $1-10. Rares are currently sitting unsorted in an old Fat Pack Box.

However, I love bulk commons and uncommons that are < 1 dollar. I have them sorted by set and collector number and collect up to 8 copies of each card in those cardboard boxes meant for storing cards. I'm currently on like box 15. I just like the idea of having all of these cards and I can think of a card, open a box, and pull it out.

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Post by SquirrelToken » 4 years ago

Vessiliana wrote:
4 years ago
I have the legendary cards sorted by color in binders. (I collect legends.) The rest of the cards not in decks are separated by color and rarity, and alphabetized (though not within each letter).

So if I want a Naturalize, for instance, I go to the green commons box and look under N.

I have ... a lot of cards.
Legendary cards are sorted chronologically in binders. I'm starting the fifth binder now. That way I don't have to go back and re-sort, and I know what's missing by the holes. Not sure why I decided to go strictly alphabetically by set, but that's how they are, not by color. It was a real pain to go back and add planeswalkers when those all got errataed to become legendary, though.

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Post by Vessiliana » 4 years ago

SquirrelToken wrote:
4 years ago

Legendary cards are sorted chronologically in binders. I'm starting the fifth binder now. That way I don't have to go back and re-sort, and I know what's missing by the holes. Not sure why I decided to go strictly alphabetically by set, but that's how they are, not by color. It was a real pain to go back and add planeswalkers when those all got errataed to become legendary, though.
I had started collecting planeswalkers, too, and kept them together for convenience. It made the errata painless for me.

But Jace and Lili are in their own binder, with all the other Jace and Lili cards. I collect Jace and Lili, so I have one of each art of their printings (so I have only one Liliana of the Veil because she's got the one art, but I have several Liliana, the Last Hopes because they have different art). I also have one of every card where they are depicted or referenced. Those are in their own Jace and Lili binder, arranged by rarity.

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Post by SquirrelToken » 4 years ago

Vessiliana wrote:
4 years ago
I had started collecting planeswalkers, too, and kept them together for convenience. It made the errata painless for me.

But Jace and Lili are in their own binder, with all the other Jace and Lili cards. I collect Jace and Lili, so I have one of each art of their printings (so I have only one Liliana of the Veil because she's got the one art, but I have several Liliana, the Last Hopes because they have different art). I also have one of every card where they are depicted or referenced. Those are in their own Jace and Lili binder, arranged by rarity.
All right, I gotta see pictures. Show me the glorious binder arrangement!

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Post by Vessiliana » 4 years ago

SquirrelToken wrote:
4 years ago
Vessiliana wrote:
4 years ago
I had started collecting planeswalkers, too, and kept them together for convenience. It made the errata painless for me.

But Jace and Lili are in their own binder, with all the other Jace and Lili cards. I collect Jace and Lili, so I have one of each art of their printings (so I have only one Liliana of the Veil because she's got the one art, but I have several Liliana, the Last Hopes because they have different art). I also have one of every card where they are depicted or referenced. Those are in their own Jace and Lili binder, arranged by rarity.
All right, I gotta see pictures. Show me the glorious binder arrangement!
I'll see what I can do. But a lot of them are in decks, too. I've got a Yawgmoth mono-black Superfriends deck with a bunch of Lilis, and then my zombie deck has other Lilis... Most of the Jaces are in my 5-color Superfriends. :angel: So I'll have to see about gathering them all together for a photo-shoot.

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Post by The N82O Molecule » 4 years ago

Ive been staring at my collection recently, heres what I got

everything in binders. . .three ring. . .white.
ive tried holding a "set" (the overall pile of cards that one set or block can yield) in the Christmas storage boxes (the ones made by mtg. . .original rav ones are the best) but when you search for a individual card you have to touch other cards

my advice, and this may change slightly, is 1" high quality ring binder for small sets and 1 1/2" for large sets. this will yield ample room. I only keep 4 of any given card so there is a max thickness for me. 2 1/2" quality ring binder to combine sets like kaledesh (large + small). however in cases like ravnica (large + large) 3" may be preferred. 3" is good for large small small (like og ravnica). id like to hear about agreeances and other opinions. what is a quality ring binder? the rings should have a flat length on them. . .the cheap ones have pewny circular rings. . .which are fine in a pinch but (all these opinions are to help maximize space and minimize unused space, and unused space is anything between the top flap of the binder and its relationships of parallel with the sheets - im so sorry lol) I say this because I store my binders upright (like shown in the pictures above) and you want those binders as tight inside the shelf as outside.

I keep lands and such in a 5 slots huge card box. similar with extra commons and whatnot. I will ask others what is the proper quantity to keep of any given land art. . .im thinking 24

decks go in sleeves in Christmas mtg card boxes. . .but that's whatever

cheers

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Post by Exares » 4 years ago

A long time ago, I kept all my playing cards in big binders. However, the collection grew and right now I'm using fat pack/bundle boxes. I've purchased fat packs from almost every set since BFZ, so right now I have many of these boxes. I have one for artifacts, another for multicolored cards, another one for legendary creatures and Planeswalkers, a couple of boxes for lands -one for basics and the other for the rest- and then boxes per color.

It takes a lot of space but I find it takes me less time to organize than binders.
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Post by RainyDay » 4 years ago

I've got binders for legends, planeswalkers, the few sets I'm trying to complete and some for format staples (Standard binder, modern binder, etc.)

Everything else goes into 5000-count boxes (one for each color, one for multi/artifacts, and a special box for tokens). Within the boxes the cards are sorted by type, creature type, mana cost, and finally how how useful I think they are. Noncreatures are grouped together based on their primary purpose (i.e. damage dealing, kill spells, counterspells. etc.). Unfortunately, full cardboard storage boxes aren't strong enough to stand up to the weight of other full boxes stacked on top of them, so I eventually had to build a wooden shelf to hold the boxes.

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Post by SquirrelToken » 4 years ago

RainyDay wrote:
4 years ago
Everything else goes into 5000-count boxes (one for each color, one for multi/artifacts, and a special box for tokens). Within the boxes the cards are sorted by type, creature type, mana cost, and finally how how useful I think they are. Noncreatures are grouped together based on their primary purpose (i.e. damage dealing, kill spells, counterspells. etc.).
This is fascinating to me because I think that it's an incredibly inefficient sorting system, and yet I keep running in to people who use it. My 5500 boxes are sorted by color, yes, but after that it's a strictly alphabetical sort. I don't dig into them looking for white creature removal - I go looking for a white card named Path to Exile. Oh look, it's in the "P" section. Mostly I build decks on Gatherer and then go dig up the cards after I know what's going in the deck already.

I'm slowly moving playsets of pricey cards into penny sleeves (they stay in place in the box, just now with a sleeve), but it's a VERY slow undertaking.

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Post by RainyDay » 4 years ago

SquirrelToken wrote:
4 years ago
RainyDay wrote:
4 years ago
Everything else goes into 5000-count boxes (one for each color, one for multi/artifacts, and a special box for tokens). Within the boxes the cards are sorted by type, creature type, mana cost, and finally how how useful I think they are. Noncreatures are grouped together based on their primary purpose (i.e. damage dealing, kill spells, counterspells. etc.).
This is fascinating to me because I think that it's an incredibly inefficient sorting system, and yet I keep running in to people who use it. My 5500 boxes are sorted by color, yes, but after that it's a strictly alphabetical sort. I don't dig into them looking for white creature removal - I go looking for a white card named Path to Exile. Oh look, it's in the "P" section. Mostly I build decks on Gatherer and then go dig up the cards after I know what's going in the deck already.

I'm slowly moving playsets of pricey cards into penny sleeves (they stay in place in the box, just now with a sleeve), but it's a VERY slow undertaking.
For some things it makes sense. Others not so much. When I'm building a commander deck I usually do it by scrounging around my collection, then cutting cards to get down to 100. If I need white blink cards, I can just go to that section and take one of everything I like. Or if I'm building a tribal deck I can easily have access to all creatures of that type. On the other hand, I can't conceive of a time where I'd say "I need a burn spell that deals exactly 5 damage and costs 4 mana. Good thing I can get straight to that."

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Post by KodiakCutpurse » 4 years ago

I have an ever-increasing collection of binders and 5000/800 count boxes.

I have five primary trade binders:
1) 5" binder (full) that holds (non-standard) $2-5 commons/uncommons and <$5 promos.
2) 5" binder (full) that holds (non-standard) $5-10 cards.
3) 4" binder (full) that holds (non-standard) $10-25 cards.
4) 4" binder (half-full) partitioned to hold (non-standard) $25-50 cards in the front and $50+ in the back.
5) 2.5" binder (full) partitioned to hold standard $2-5 commons/uncommons and <$5 promos first, then $5-10 cards, $10-25 cards, and $25+.

I have all <$5 non-foil rares (i.e. bulk) in approximately 15 3" binders sorted chronologically and by collector number (pre-Exodus are BUGRW; Exodus onward are WUBRG).

I have all <$5 non-promo foils in four 3" binders sorted chronologically and by collector number (as above).

I have one 4" binder that holds cards for "in process" Legacy and Modern decks as well as about 5 pages of Unlimited/Revised duals, because those are not available for trade. Unlimited are for future Legacy and 93/94 decks, and Revised are for future EDH decks.

All remaining <$2 uncommons are stored in approximately 10 5000 count boxes (sorted in the same fashion as the bulk rares), all remaining <$2 commons are similarly stored in approximately 30 5000 count boxes, and all basic lands are in approximately 5 5000 count boxes sorted as above.

For collectors purposes I have 25 3" binders for complete (booster product) sets starting with Unlimited through Core20, and another 13 3" binders for promos, box sets, and tokens. I also have one 4" binder for graded cards. Hell, the slab pages alone are collector's items since UltraPro discontinued them years ago.

Beyond that I have about 50 800 count boxes that hold approximately 400 old standard/block decks spanning all standard environments up to a couple years ago (some still in process). I have one 800 count box that holds four Legacy and two 93/94. I have another that holds Pauper and Modern decks. And I have yet another six that hold 27 EDH decks.

Lastly, I have another few 5000/800 count boxes for various other "in process" projects.

I believe that's pretty much everything. At least with regard to Magic.

Once or twice a year I have to reprice and rearrange the binders. It's excruciatingly time consuming and the primary downside of having such a large collection. I'll probably get rid of the $2-5 common/uncommon binder. It's nice for EDH staples, but a pain to maintain otherwise.

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Post by t0rture_d0ct0r » 4 years ago

I just started out back in March after not playing since Origins. I definitely have some catching up to do judging by the posts in this thread.
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Post by Dresden » 4 years ago

Nice! I do this as well, looks like we get our images from that same site, hehe. Too bad there's still some sets with missing images, but all in all I've been very happy with this method of organizing
.H. wrote:
4 years ago
I do a binder for every set (that I have cards from) with Ultra-Pro 9 pocket pages.

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Post by .H. » 4 years ago

Dresden wrote:
4 years ago
Nice! I do this as well, looks like we get our images from that same site, hehe. Too bad there's still some sets with missing images, but all in all I've been very happy with this method of organizing
Yeah, definitely not perfect, but pretty good.

I actually was editing his templates in Photoshop, so I have a decent idea how he made them, but one thing I am not sure of is where he gets such high quality images of the expansion symbols. I think they might be vector files, but maybe he converts them over himself.

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Post by Kajaxis » 4 years ago

Man, some of these make me feel like an amateur, lol. I did get a few ideas from browsing this thread at least.

I just have 3 binders. One for old frames, one for modern, and one for the new frames with the foil sticker. I used to keep a trade binder, but not anymore since I don't go out to tournaments or events anymore.

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