Organizational System

[jazzykat]

Hi all,
I just got back to my parents house where I am fighting with the issue of too much stuff. I would like to know how other people with big collections store their magic cards (and binders just won't cut it :B ) because I am running out of space and can never find a card I want because I am not organized enough.

Cheers,
JK

[Machinus]

Lots and lots of white cardboard boxes. I use small ones for my vintage deckbuilding cards. I use larger ones for the rest of my collection, mostly sorted by set and color. I keep most of them stored and never open them because I have most of my tech prepared.

[Kowal]

I own less than one thousand magic cards.

[BurningIce]

I own one of every card in magic from alpha to Champions of Kamigawa.  (but one of every card, not one of every edition, so I have one lotus for example).  My cards are seperated by color, by rarity, and then in alphabetical order.  I store them in long white boxes, that're are supposed to hold 800 cards, but at the moment there's close to 1100 in each.  My expensive cards I keep in toploaders. 

Everything fits in one drawer in my room at my parents' house.  I don't trust my apartment for safety.

When I want to take cards out to play with them, I have a giant excel sheet with all the stuff I have, so I note that the cards have been removed, and so I don't misplace/lose anything.

[crazedpenguinman]

Well I stuffed all my playable rares and foils into a folder and all my playable commons and uncommons into a 500 count box- that serves me well, apart from that the rest of it ends up in a 1100 count box under my desk, which is unbeleivably disorganised.

[Moxlotus]

A fucking huge heap on a table that is shoved in the corner of the basement.

Don't follow this example.

[dandan]

I have decks in cassette boxes (about 40 decks) and the cards in three wide cassette boxes (U/artifact, R/G and W/B) plus lands in another single width cassette box. I then have booster display boxes full of spares (about 4 boxes) and about 5-6 boxes of excess cards (crap cards and excess quantities of usable stuff). Plus a trade binder and a cassette box of uncommons for trade.

The problem is, that in the age of CD and DVDs I can't find cassette boxes anymore.

[The Atog Lord]

Binders. I have my non-rare cards organized by binder, with one binder per block. Those binders are divided by color, and further divided by creature/noncreature. I put four of each card in such a binder, with excess going into a large box in my room. Rares are put into trade binders or into my "deckbuilding rares" binder.

Yes, I get really into organizing. And yes, I have quite a few large binders. But it makes finding my cards very easy.

[pooispoois]

First, I have all of my rares not in decks in two binders, ordered by sets, then by colors, and inside the colors an arrangement me and my brother invented to keep the cards organized. It is Creatures-Instant-Sorceries-Enchant-Stuff(also ordered)-Enchantments. There's more to it, but I won't describe it all in here. It is  a complex way of organizing, though simple to browse. Eventually I had my closet full of huge card stacks (two for each color including two for artifacts) that seemed they would fall every time I opened the closet. Because of that, I separated the cards from each block, and put each block in a different shoebox. Of course, there the cards follow the same order as in my trade binder.
But I am a sucker for organization
And that's also because I happen to have close to 8000-9000 cards, perhaps 10000, so organization is a must.

[Revvik]

I own less than one thousand magic cards.

Ditto-ed.  I keep my stuff down to "the deck I'm currently playing," four binders (the little 4-pocket per page ones - excellent space-saving storage) that contain all of my Vintage playable stuff, like playsets of Wastelands, fetchlands, and foil staples like Thirst for Knowledge, and two stacks of cards (about 500 per stack) that I haven't had time to stuff into the binders yet.

If you have much, much more than that, try buying a few 5,000 count boxes and cut index cards into tabs for dividers.  They stack really well.

[Komatteru]

I have these two savage William and Mary binders for my amazing cards: one is lavander and holds my foils, and the other is light pink and holds my nonfoils.  While I call those my "trade binders," most of the stuff in there is mine and doesn't get traded.  However, the old rule that everything is for trade, it just depends on what I'm getting back.  Roland found this out when he managed to get some pretty hot stuff out of me cause he had something I really wanted.  I also have a red binder full of completely tradable cards.  The contents of that binder aren't very good.

For my other cards, I have a 5 row cardboard box in which everything is sorted by color and rarity (common or uncommon), and then alphabetical from there.  I used to have a box of mediocre rares, but I traded those all in for money to buy real cards.

[Smmenen]

I think organizating magic cards is an enormous waste of time.  I have seen lots of various systems.  If I cared I would use something like Freddie Williams has or Kevin Cron. 

Kevin Cron has absolutely the most amazing organization of any player I've ever seen.

If you ever watch him at a tournament, it is truly impressive.

Almost at all times he has on him:

* 2 five color decks
* his type four
* his kit of markers to doodle/deface cards
* a two column box of about ten Vintage guantlet decks
* his vintage deck of course
* and a tin with dice, change, shrinkydink smokestack counters and various and sundry items
* and his binder

Kevin's organizatoin is a huge cabinet organized by color and set and I'm not even sure what all. 

He recommended a store called the "container store" if I recall correctly.

For me, I have basically one binder with all of the vintage playables separated by color.  It has basically two pages for each color that I use front and back (three for blue) and 3 three artifacts and land. 

I have one 6 inch box that I keep parts of 2-3 Vintage decks and now a Legacy deck.  and one deckbox where I keep the Vintage deck I'm playing at any given tournament. 

I honestly don't own that many cards.  The rest of my cards are in one of two boxes completely unorganized in my basement.  If I need a card, I'd honestly rather just buy it than have to search through one of those two boxes. 

Of course, this is made infinitely easier by the fact that:

1) I dont play standard or block anymore
2) I have lots of people I can borrow cards from at any point
3) I can basically get anything from SCG I want to own

So I recommend that you ask Kevin or Freddy Williams.

I also think that trading is a huge waste of time... so that you shows you what I think is important...

[Hi-Val]

I have a small 1000 card box that I keep my deck and playable T1 cards in it. All of the cards are organized by color and alphabetical order. Past that, all the unplayable stuff is sorted by color in a 5000 count box. I don't organize it past that because I know I'll most likely never need Hungry Mist or Drudge Skeletons. In the event that I do, I can dig it out of my bigger box in a little bit of time.

I've also sold a LOT of my unplayable stuff as bulk to keep the space down. If you're not going to play with the cards, at the very least give them to a new kid just starting off to help their collection!

[vartemis]

1 Magic longbox for type 1 decks (Using the Black Mana symbol one, anyone know where to find the other colors?)

1 Magic longbox for type 2 decks (found a Mirage one in a store about to be thrown out!)

1 pizza box (4 row box for the uninitiated) for holding my decksleeves, VS cards, tokens, lifecounters & spindowns, basic lands and artifacts.

1 large pizza box (5 Rows) for magic commons, separated by color, then by name.  I find it a waste of time to sort by set.  Why not just go by name?  If I am looking for a dark ritual, I dont want to keep going through sets till i find some.  I just go to "D" and see whats left.  If im out, i just print a paper proxy off and stick it in front of "stone hands" or something.

1 large d ring binder for my sets (mirage, alliances, darksteel, fifthdawn and unhinged)

1 magic binder (the one with the mage holding cards) for all my traders, separated by color then value, then name.

1 magic binder (same as above) for all my "want to use in a deck but likely never will" cards

1 binder full of random crap traders that havent gotten around to being put in my other binder.

I also use essential magic to keep track of most of my cards.  I used to use magic suitcase, but I liked the idea of an online version, allowing me to check anywhere.  If im at a tourney and a nice bloke is looking for something that doesnt happen to be in my binder, I can check my list with someones web enabled PDA or cell (there's always one around somewhere) and let him know if i have it.

j

[Matt]

One box of about a thousand cards, kept tuned and randomized for drafting with;
One box for my decks and cards that can switch between decks (right now I have G/B survival built but I keep the cards around to switch it to welder-survival if I need to)
One box for my basic land and weaker decks
One box for my cards which are unplayable but which I like keeping around anyway
and a paper bag for miscellaneous cards that wouldn't fit elsewhere.

[Jacob Orlove]

One box for random playables, sorted by color.
A few binders, one with random stuff to trade for T4 cards, the others with cards that don't belong in boxes.
And a couple decks built at any one time.

Oh, and shoeboxes full of junk commons that I should sell but am too lazy to.

[Dozer]

My collection is pretty small, so easy to organize. I never counted the cards, but it all fits on one shelf. I have
- one big binder with Crap Rares and my Uncommons;
- one smaller binder with playables (which I almost never trade out of), which is basically my collection and deckbuilding binder;
- two one-row longboxes and one two-row box for commons and lands, sorted by color;
- a couple of display boxes with cards in them (need another longbox or two)
- a small 4-cards-per-sheet binder for trading (which I don't do seriously, either);
- and one Deckmasters metal box with three single-deck boxes (plastic) and one four-deck box which conveniently fits exactly length and height of the box itself. The four-deck box holds three decks (a casual Darksteel stations deck, a R/w casual dragon deck, and my old Sui), and the other three decks are my Legacy Show and Tell, my Vintage Gifts and a proxied test deck, which is currently WTF. At all times in the box are also Sealed sleeves, a pen, paper, dice and glass beads for tokens.

If I go to a tournament, all I need is my box and my trade and/or playables binder. Three minutes, and I'm ready.

[rvs]

For keeping cards you don't use, a file-storing type of cabinet rocks. Ask ctthespian or bigmac to take pictures of theirs. They are awesome.

Fortunately, I don't have this problem myself, since I only have like 300 or 400 cards I care about.

[KrauserKrauser]

I have entirely too many cards.

I recently purchased a box storing setup for my cards.  Basically I have 6 sets of boxes that each hold 12 long boxes.  The majority of the boxes are 930 count boxes (40 of the 72) with the remainder being 800 counts.  While I wanted all one size, the store only had that setup and I didn't want to bother searching the other stores for more.

I have them seperated by set with some sets with 4+ boxes and some with like 8 cards total inside.  I'm finally close to being as organized as I want to be with my cards.  If nothing else it limits the size to which my collection to grow as long I don't buy more 12 box holders.

I also have a 3 row box of land and a 3 row box of crap rares that I need to do something with.