I got that album thingy with inserts, but whats bugging me is - if im not aiming to collect a whole edition, how do i organise my cards? by color? by some other order? I have mixed WoE and Commander Masters cards, but would like to have them somewhere nice when they are not in decks.
If i like an ed and want to have it complete then its going into its own album / fold and sorted by numbers.
I kinda hoped ixalan would be it, but that mixed universe thing is so not my cup of tea…
as your collection grows, so must your storage solutions change. Here are the phases my collection went through:
phase 1: everything stored randomly in prerelease and bundle boxes
phase 2: buying a few empty bundle boxes online so I have 5 bundle boxes, storing per colour and in ascending mana value
phase 3: getting a longbox (google ‘tcg longbox’) that holds 1000 cards and storing my cards in there. At this point I switched to ordering in the objectively best way for big collections: per set, from oldest set to newest set, in ascending collection number (the number on the bottom left of the card). Ordering per collection number will also automatically order your cards per colour and alphabetically for every set.
phase 4: getting multiple longboxes to accommodate the ever expanding collection, continuing with the collection method of phase 3
trades are still in a binder though!
@calvinball @skele_tron the optimal storage order depends on a few things:
* do you want to keep copies of each printing? (How many Collossal Dreadmaws do you need)
* will it bother you that WotC changes the collector number order for random reasons?
* do you want the 12 different copies of modern cards to be randomly sorted in weird places
* do you browse your ox when building a deck list or dive into it to find the cards you’ve already put into your deck list
* will you keep unplayable cards
Etc
Im lying to myself by telling that im going to keep my collection pretty slim ( unless a copy card comes with awesome artwork, or is a foil ) so cards i like i would keep 4 + 1 foil, everything else is going to change ( because i dont have any target edition i would like to collect ( altho i have most of my cards from commander masters.
I would like to have it organised so i can brainstorm, i thought binders were awesome because i can list through the cards and maybe get an idea, but they are bulky and get filled fast - so i would keep binders for cards i really, really like.
Some unplayable i will keep ( that also depends on if i like the card or not )
Very fair! I would posit that for a large collection where you keep every single card you open, and for which you have an online collection tracker such as deckbox.org, using the organising system I mentioned is still the best. There will always be one single place that a card you’re looking for would be, and nowhere else.
@calvinball Sorting by collector number is bad unless you can remember which copy of The Second Doctor you are looking for, is it #156, #440, #553, #761, #1031, or #1144?
When cards had a single printing in a set (and the exceptions were #160a & #160b so they’d be adjacent is a good solution) it was viable. If you want to keep things by set (which I disagree with, but I only build decks for eternal formats) at least do pure alphabetical or colour alphabetical inside the set. You don’t want to hunt for multiple copies of a single card in several sections of that set.
Well that’s why I said it was only good if you have an online collection tracker where you catalog all your cards . I know exactly where all my copies of The Doctor are because I have recorded which versions I have. I can then build my decks online, and once I’m ready to play them I just go to my collection with a list of set and collector numbers and I can pull out exactly what I need