Thinking Outside the Deckbox #1
Thinking Outside the Deckbox
ducttapedeckbox
25 June 2014
1794 views
25 June 2014
1794 views
Welcome to the pilot article of my new series, Thinking Outside the Deckbox. In this series I will discuss ways to embrace your love for Magic even if your brain is dry with brewing ideas and you do not have anyone to play against. These topics include, but are not limited to, strategic organization, card altering, and buying/creating your own gaming supplies.
This week, I will discuss an aspect of playing a trading card game/collectible card game that every Magic enthusiast knows all too well: card organization. I will break the process of sorting through your collection into easy steps that I believe are the most effective ways of organizing your collection. I find that the best way of organizing a process like this is through lists, so this article will essentially be one long list. Feel free to omit or alter any portion of my advice to fit your own ideas. One aspect that I will not address in this article is the organization of your rare/trading collection, as I will be devoting an entire article to this in a few weeks.
Step 1: Motivation
The first part of any project is to get motivated to start and complete it. Organizing your Magic collection is among the projects that must be completed in order for it to be worth your time and effort, so make sure you are ready for this daunting task. Below, I will list some reasons why you should organize.
- Well first, there is the obvious: you know where everything is! If done meticulously and correctly, you will know exactly where any card in your collection is. All of the remaining points stem off of this - having the ability to quickly find any card defines a properly organized collection.
- You will be prepared for the breakout of new formats and deck lists. When the Commander format hit the scene, many cards that were otherwise considered bulk became sought after. The same goes for decks that make an unpredicted appearance at a large, sanctioned tournament. If an obscure card is the star in a meta-breaking deck, odds are that the demand, and price, for that card will skyrocket. You want to be prepared for this!
- You may find things you never knew you had! In my case, I was looking through my collection and found a few copies of Spell Pierce from when I played back in Zendikar and had zero awareness of card values. Hey, a stack of $2 commons is much better than another couple centimeters in my bulk collection!
Step 2: Preparation
The next step in almost every project is to prepare. Whether you are painting a room in your house or assembling a newly purchased piece of furniture, your stress during the process will be greatly alleviated if you are prepared for the entire project. For painting a room, you want to make sure you have useable brushes and have the entire perimeter of the room, windows, and ceiling lined with painter’s tape. For assembling furniture, you gather all of the different tools you will need. Having all of this ready will let you focus on the task at hand rather than worrying about what you still need to find and/or buy.
A multi-row trading card storage box (you need to estimate the size of your collection and purchase accordingly) and patience are the only things necessary for this project. However, depending on how meticulous you want your collection to be organized, there are some others things you should gather, namely for dividers.
There are many different ways to create dividers, and below I will detail the materials for a simple version and a more complicated version. Of course, the more complicated version may look more aestetic, but how much time you spend on making them is up to you. The labels on the dividers also depend on how you organize your card, so I will leave this part up to you.
- The simple method is just a hard top-loader (make sure these fit in the card storage box you have!) with a printed out insert for each section. All you need for this is hard top-loader sleeves and access to a computer/printer.
- The more complicated method, and the method I prefer, involves making dividers by hand. They are essentially aesthetic pieces of cardboard. For this you will need cardboard (cereal boxes work wonders), scissors, a ruler, duct tape, masking tape, a pencil, and a permanent marker.
I may be repeating myself, but STOP HERE if you are not in the proper mindset for a relatively boring, uneventful process. My best suggestion to prevent extreme boredom is to put on some music, a television show, and/or have your computer handy in case you are in need of a TappedOut fix. Also, make sure you are comfortable! Your body does not take kindly to sitting slouched over or on the floor for hours.
Step 3: Separating your Cards
With the materials listed above gathered, find a place with a lot of open space - an empty dining room table or the floor of a room that receives little traffic is best. If you have a pet, plan accordingly. You do not need your piles getting knocked over! Depending on the size of your collection, this process may require multiple sittings over the course of a few hours or days.
And now, let us getting organizing! Please note that this is not the only way to organize your collection. It is the method I use and the method that I believe is the most logical and convenient.
Below, I will use the letters C, U, R, and M to denote common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rare cards, respectively.
- Separate your C/U from your R/M cards. Yes, even the bulk rare cards that you may have dozens of go with your R/M cards. Now is also the time to be looking for those valuable or highly sought after C/U cards to set aside with the R/Ms.
- Separate your remaining C/U into two piles: cards that are in Standard, and cards that are not. If you do not play standard at all, you may wish to skip this step and ignore the differentiation I make between the two sets of cards.
- Set aside everything except for the C/U in Standard. Sort these cards by SET, then COLOR, then place in ALPHABETICAL order. This will follow the card numbering located on the bottom of the cards.
- I recommend using a separate box solely for your Standard C/U. If you have the desire to lug it around, carrying a small box with just standard bulk is much more convenient that pounds upon pounds of bulk that nobody will have interest in at a Standard FNM. Set these cards aside in piles that do not affect your organizing area.
- Now take your C/U from non-Standard sets and organize them by COLOR, then ALPHABETICAL order. The reason why I do not recommend sorting by set here is that many cards have seen reprints. If you have 2x Canyon Minotaur from M10, one from M11, and one from M14, you do not want to have to look in each of these sets for them. However, with thousands upon thousands of non-Standard C/U in your collection, organizing them the same way in which organized Standard C/U may be the most beneficial. There are not too many reprints, and as long as you know your ABC’s and the order in which blocks were released, finding reprints will not be too difficult. Another option for those with extensive card knowledge would be to take all of your reprints and place them with the set in which they were most recently or first printed in. There are many routes to take here, and all of them will work as long as you are consistent.
- Place these newly organized cards aside. Now you should only have all of your R/M cards as well as valuable or sought after C/U unorganized. These will all go into your trade binder(s), but I will be saving my discussion of strategically placing cards in your trade binder for another article. But do not stop reading now! We still have to place our cards in the boxes.
Step 4: Finishing Up
Now that you have your cards in order, it is time to place them in their boxes. Between each separated section, there should be some form of divider. Whether it is a basic land with a masking tape tab on the top or a constructed on, it should be something. Below, I share my thoughts on making two types of dividers:
- The first is pretty simple. Make a card-sized label with the appropriate set name/color/etc. on it and place it in a hard top loader. You can also wrap the top with masking tape to write the label at the top.
- The second is a little more complicated but, in my opinion, looks better and more professional. To make these, cut a piece of cardboard the size of a row in your card storage box. Wrap it in duct tape, and then place a ring of masking tape around the top. The masking tape allows you to write the label on the top of the divider. You can also cut the corners for some added design. Make sure that there are not any sticky surfaces (because Magic is just that exciting) on your dividers so that you do not ruin the first or last card in a section.
With your dividers done, you can finally place your cards in the storage box. Congratulations, you have finally organized your Magic collection! Now that you are done, go through a checklist. Think of a junk common and mentally time yourself to see how long it takes you to find that card. If it takes too long, you either have to get used to your organizational system or start all over. Yup, get used to it.
If you are not satisfied with my thoughts, you can check out other articles that discuss this topic. I read up a little on the topic on in this ChannelFireball article, this draft magic article and this Gathering Magic article. The last article is for those of you with tens of thousands of cards in your collection looking for a long summer project. The others apply to collections of all sizes. All of them give similar ideas, some of which are reflected in all of the articles (mine included).
I will return in two weeks with another article in the Thinking Outside the Deckbox series, most likely on strategically organizing your trade binder. I may decide to change things up though, and write about 3D card altering. Requests? Next week, I will be back with Bang for Your Buck talking about tips for playing on a budget in the Standard format.
If you have any questions about my organizational tips or want to share how you organize your cards, please post below! More than anything, I hope this series inspires you to, well, think outside of your deckbox (oh! Thanks to Johnny5 for the series name!) and expand how you apply Magic to other hobbies of yours. Thanks for reading!
smash10101 says... #2
I love the name! And I really need to work on step 1. I think that's what's holding me back from an organized collection. I plan on just sorting by color and rarity, and ignoring standard or not as well as set.
Johnny5, you can't just talk about how awesome your playmats are, you have to post pictures!
June 25, 2014 2:17 a.m.
My personal preference is to organize cards by set/block into binders with sleeves. For instance I have a binder for the Theros block, a binder for 3 core sets, etc. I put 4 of every Common/Uncommon into that binder sorted by card number and then any extras go into a fat pack box sorted by card number as well. My rares are divided into bulk/good stuff/stuff I want to keep. Of course this takes forever whenever a new set comes out so for someone who already has a lot of cards to sort I wouldn't recommend that.
June 25, 2014 8:44 a.m.
NuBByThuMB says... #5
Everyone's gotta start somewhere! Being on top of your collection is a healthy way to keep bulk from building up! I have the tradition of selling all of my rotating standard bulk (be it rares or otherwise) at the end of EVERY block. This keeps the collection fresh and cash in pocket to continue investing! Well written!
June 25, 2014 10:46 a.m.
:( didn't work, so here's the link to each one instead:Stormbreath Playmat
Selesnya Playmat
June 25, 2014 12:27 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #8
Thanks for the feedback everyone! Like the meme, zandl. Thoughts for future articles? Should I continue with organizing your trade binder, or skip to something different and come back to that? Duct tape deck boxes? 3D cards? Card/playmat altering (I'd need help with this!)?
It's amusing to see two entirely different methods, Zurnic and NuBByThuMB. Must take up a lot of space, Zur.
And those are pretty amazing, Johnny5 - I may call on you should I write an article that involves custom mats.
June 25, 2014 5:02 p.m.
I have about 12,500 cards in my collection. I've found it easier to organize cards into blocks for sets that I don't have much of, and then by set for anything else, using binders for money cards, rares, and mythics, and another for foils, just because I keep them separate and rarely trade them. I have a bunch of other binders for random stuff I collect, but the most important part is that I keep blocks and sets in their own labeled boxes, in a bookcase that I have, along with the binders, all labeled with the set symbol or block symbols, and then wubrg inside the boxes, sometimes alphabetical order, but always divided by color. Everything is also entered in a database program I downloaded, which helps me keep track of reprints and price changes.
Just thought I'd put up another way of doing things. There really is no right way, just what works well for you, and that greatly varies depending on the size of your collection.
June 25, 2014 6:21 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #10
Sporq raises a good point. This article is written towards those of you with moderately sized collections. For those of you who have playsets of every set, binders probably work the best. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Keep them coming!
June 25, 2014 6:43 p.m.
As someone who has always tended towards casual tribal builds, I sort my creatures by type, not name.
I'm also odd in that I sort EVERYTHING alphabetically. My usual method is to sort in the following order.
Colors: Black, Blue, Green, Red, White
Type: Artifact, Creature, Enchantment, Instant, Land, Planeswalker, Sorcery
Subtype: Elf Shaman, Elf Warrior . . .
Name: Llanowar Augur, Llanowar Elves . . .
I only play casual and EDH, so standard, blocks, etc. don't figure in.
P.S. Great article!
June 26, 2014 2:50 p.m.
Johnny5: Uhh...how much is the selesnya mat going for??
Alternatively, how much would you charge for a different custom mat?
June 26, 2014 6:52 p.m.
@Spootyone - I haven't sold any custom mats yet, but if I were to sell one I think $25 would be a fair price. A local shop in Charlotte sells custom mats for $25 where you provide the digital image, so I think my hand painted ones are about equal to that. I would also be willing to undertake certain custom images, provided I think they are within my realm of abilities.
June 26, 2014 7:20 p.m.
Charge more bro. Custom printed vs custom painted is a WHOLE diff time commitment.
June 26, 2014 7:40 p.m.
Thanks for the vote of confidence Kravian but until I develop some sort of support base that thinks my shit is worth more $$ I have to sell them for cheap. I don't mind, heck it's fun to do and just having people appreciate my art is worth it.
June 26, 2014 9:20 p.m.
I've only been playing since Ravnica Block and I really only play Standard so it's not too much. I have a little bookcase for all my magic stuff that I could pretty much fill up.
June 27, 2014 8:24 a.m.
JakeHarlow says... #18
Nice article! I just went through this EXACT process, ducttapedeckbox! The only differences were that for my bulk C/U cards, I further divided by card type. So I have SET, COLOR, then TYPE. All cards within these divisions are in alphabetical order, as you recommended. Multicolor cards simply follow the ABCs.
I further took every card in my collection with a Guild watermark (RTR block mostly, some City of Guilds block and Modern Masters examples too) and gave them their own subdivisions. They followed the same format as the rest of my cards, except that each guild was isolated as its own mini-collection. Not sure why I did this, but I felt compelled to.
Also, how would you recommend for those OCD sufferers among us (I include myself) to organize our basic lands? I do by SET, then priority on the color wheel (Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, Forest), then COLLECTOR NUMBER. In doing this, I funnily discovered that the RTR block has 5 different versions of each basic land! instead of most expansions' usual 4. Interesting.
Thanks for the article, it was a great read. Keep up the good work.
June 27, 2014 8:55 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #19
Thanks for the support guys! And Johnny5 - while I do think it's important for you to establish yourself, you also don't want to come in super low that you aren't being compensated for your time and effort. I'd go higher than $25, but not by much.
I do it just like you, JakeHarlow - SET, WUBRG, NUMBER. I sometimes get lazy and don't go by number, but I do have the different artworks separate.
Any requests for the next TODB article?
June 27, 2014 10:32 p.m.
I'm certainly looking forward to the alterations article.
Personally, I've decided to organize my collection a little differently because of how I deckbuild.
I've taken several of the 5-slot bulk card boxes and some strips of cardboard. I notched the cardboard strips so they fit onto the dividers in the box with a little tab over the top, so basically I have a bunch of little slots of adjustable depth. Editions span left to right and colors span front to back (with multicolor in the front: I run multicolor cards a lot.)
I then sort by mana cost rather than alphabetical. If any of the little cubes have banned cards, I put them behind a sticky note marking them as such. I just have to have a label on the box marking different legalities, but generally just a sticker with the set's symbol is enough.
Also, while I have a rare binder, I wind up abusing the back five or six pages for my sideboards and maybeboards. I'm actually thinking of getting a dedicated binder for it. Does anybody else do this?
June 28, 2014 11:58 p.m.
JakeHarlow says... #21
Not me, but that's a solid idea right there. A kind of skunkworks, drawing board binder with all the cards I am on the fence about for my current decks. God knows I have a few "packets" of these cards. This way, they'll all be in one place and they will be ready to board in if I want to playtest or run them for a specific event.
Think I'll try it.
June 29, 2014 12:15 a.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #22
I really like that idea, Egann. I do something similar. I make my own deck boxes (hence my username), and my latest one is large enough to fit a fully sleeved EDH deck. It has a section perpendicular to the main deck section to hold a sideboard or some maybeboard cards (it also has a slot on the front to hold a card, whether it be your commander or just a card with art that suits your current deck. It also has an abacus life counter. Yup, I went all out on it.). If I use the box for a 60-card deck, the SB goes in with the main deck and the maybeboard goes in the side section, the EDH deck goes in the main section and the maybeboard goes in the side section.
I think the next TODB article will be about deck boxes.
June 29, 2014 9:33 a.m.
You know what, ducttapedeckbox? It's time to organize my collection.
June 29, 2014 2:53 p.m.
That's it...I'm organizing my collection by set today! Thanks for the motivation!
June 29, 2014 4:15 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #26
How far back do your collections span? Mine didn't pick up until Shards-Zen, then ISD and on so it wasn't too bad :)
June 29, 2014 4:19 p.m.
Well, I go as far back as having a few things from INN block, but my collection is mostly RTR and THS block, plus M13 and M14. I have so many bulk rares >.<
June 29, 2014 5:52 p.m.
I'd love to see your method for the 3D cards. We used to do this way back in the day with L5R. But we had an obvious card to do that with, the stronghold. The only MTG card I can think of would be a commander.
Also, what is your advice for staying motivated? I'm up in the 10k + card range and I get bored after about 2 hours.
June 29, 2014 9:25 p.m.
My method involves piecing it out, maybe uncommons one day and then rare/mythics into binders on another day. Save the commons for a looooong night of boredom!
June 29, 2014 10:21 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #30
If that - depending on how you sort it out, you can do small 30-60 minute chunks and stop for a while. I do recommend determining a goal with respect to progress and not time so you don't start up in the middle of a category. Do one segment and see how long that takes you. You'll have a better idea of the time commitment you're looking at.
June 29, 2014 10:44 p.m.
I bought the Decked App on my Ipad and now I catalog everything on it. That is an absolute MUST, MUST, MUST. (The only thing lacking in that app is I wish it told me which of my decks I am currently using that card in.) Then I place them in binders (I have a binder for each color and one for land, multi color and artifacts)I only put 4-6 of each card in the binder, depending on how likely I am to use them. Also I try to initially use only 4 or 5 of the 9 slots, so I have a place to put the new cards. Once a page fills up I add another page and spread out the slots again. Everything beyond the 4-6 I put in the binder goes in a box, as randomly as possible, because that's my grab bag cube for the neighberhood kids draft I keep telling myself I'll do someday....My wife mocks me for my "alphabetizing the spices" as she calls it, but I find it's easy to find the cards I want and it kinda just extends the enjoyment of the game for me...
June 30, 2014 11:55 a.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #32
I've been debating adding all of my cards to a digital list. I personally don't see much benefit in it, at least for the current size of my collection. It wouldn't take much longer for me to look in my box and see if I have the card than typing it into a database. Is there something I'm not considering here?
June 30, 2014 12:11 p.m.
Those are amazing Johnny5!
As for my sort method, as pain in the ass as it was to do, was to sort by block, then color, then alphabetically. I spent nearly two weeks of constant work sorting the numerous collections i had bought, got pretty burned out, but in the end it was worth it. It's easy to find what I need, when I need it, or to flicker through and come up with ideas. Doing it as a block instead of by set allows me to look at the block as a whole, which is good for recent sets where the same keyword might be across all three sets. Sorting several thousand cards is a daunting task no matter how you look at it.
July 1, 2014 3:21 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #34
Well said, DaggerV. How do you address reprints? I was looking through today and found half a dozen Doom Blade s and some other decent C/U that I forget were printed in the sets I was looking at.
July 1, 2014 3:28 p.m.
If I have tons of them, like say Doom Blades, I'll stick about four into a binder, and the rest into one of those long white card boxes. I have enough Doom Blade to build a small house I'm sure. .
July 1, 2014 3:59 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox, I find the digital aspect is best when I DON'T know what I'm looking for...I decide I want a Green or white creature casting cost 3 or 4 with a power of at least 3...Bang, A list of every card that fits the bill. I can then tell it to search just ones I own. It also tells me the current price for that card if I don't own it... It also works with key words or creature subtypes....
July 1, 2014 8:28 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #37
Hmm I'm still debating - I tend to recognize the cards that I own when I see them in a search (my collection isn't all that big), but I may just use T/O's inventory list at some point.
July 2, 2014 12:13 a.m.
The other good uses for a digital record of your collection includes not only being able to keep stuff together by set, yet still being able to know where reprints are, but also something few people think about: Insurance claims. If you have a digital record that can be backed up onto something like dropbox or google drive, then you can snap a few pictures of your real collection, and be able to claim your cards with your insurance should something horrible happen, say a flood, or a fire, or the like.
Considering the value of many people's collections, even if you don't have any power 9 cards or things of that price level, you can still easily hit $1k or more, just with TCG Player mid-pricing. And when you're talking insurance, you always pad that number, so think more like TCG Player High-Pricing, or at the very least, Star City type prices. Plus it helps that most databases keep track of pricing, so that you have an idea of overall value to declare if you do intend to mention it to insurance.
July 3, 2014 9:23 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #39
Ah that's a very good point, Sporq. However, a list won't mean anything to the insurance company; they'd want pictures of every card that's worth something. That might be something to invest an afternoon in.
July 4, 2014 10:05 a.m.
Here's a good video I found on the subject. Just finished sorting my cards with this new system and it seems to work pretty well so far. Only really works if you have a lot of cards, because if they aren't really filled then they tend to slide around and make a mess. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBq-sXKj2UU&list=UU7-hR5EfgpM6oHfiGDkxfMA
Johnny5 says... #1
Thanks for the shout-out, and I think I'm really going to enjoy this series!
My personal favorite thing to do "outside the deckbox" is creating my own custom playmats from blank white ones. I have only done 4 or 5, 3 of which are murals of graffiti and some of my random art, but the 2 real ones I have finished look amazing. I use a mixture of pencil sketching, Sharpie markers (both fine and ultrafine tip), and lightly watered down acrylic paint that you can buy in bulk at any craft store. If you would like some info, tips, or general information on altering blank mats for a future article, I would love to help.
My two finished mats are a Stormbreath Dragon with Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius style head, and a luscious green tree with the Selesnya symbol etched in the bark with some accompanying graffiti.
June 25, 2014 1:25 a.m.