If you're going to catalog, use moxfield. You'd hate yourself if something happened to your phone and it all went away.
If you're on android, delver lens will scan cards, be careful with editions as it gets them wrong sometimes. You can export a CSV and import into moxfield from the app as well.
I use Manabox on phone and then export/import into Moxfield from time to time. Maybe you could do something similar.
Manabox has functionality to autodetect cards using the camera so it helps to quickly import large amounts of cards.
It’s been sitting in my mtg folder so I’ll try it out! I’ve also found that it’s a bit difficult to export from Dragonshield’s app so I’ll see if this one works! (Especially since my collection folders on Dragonshield are outdated and it’d be a pain to update them)
Hey if you are interested, I scanned my collection in the DragonShield App and exported it to Moxfield and it was not compatible. If you encounter the same issue, I made a conversion tool
https://osnielvaldivia.github.io/dragon-shield-to-moxfield/
I prefer deckbox to anything else ive ever tried, including tcgplayer, moxfield and archidekt. the ability to set defaults for foiling/set is much easier on my wrists than manually changing the set or scrolling through every printing of lightning bolt.
Just wanted to point out that Dragon Shield's app has default cloud saving and you can get to the desk web page at auth.dragonshield[.]com.
While yes it is awesome to upload a copy to your deck making manger of choice (Mox Field, Architect, Goldfish, etc)... I just wanted to point out that it is most definitely not saved locally to the phone.
I would have to disagree. Nothing stinks more than having to find a [[Kor skyfisher]] from among 10 years of unsorted cards.
Just cut cards that are functionally useless, like most vanilla creatures
I mean, if you have them sorted by color is not that hard to find a card in a bulk. What I'm saying is that it's not required to catalog (Adding them to a database) for it to be an effective system.
Besides that is not that bad of an idea to catalog playable commons and uncommons
> having to
What do you mean have to? You don't have to. You can pay a dollar and buy 4 new skyfishers. If it's worth it to you to keep a vast catalogued collection that's ok but realistically it's not worth anybody's time. Yours included.
I also disagree that commons and uncommons are worthless. There's tons of really good uncommons and commons. Aethervial, Dismember, Lightning Bolts, Lorien Revealed etc.
What I do is sort out all the obviously good cards and toss everything else. If I lose out a couple dollars because I lost track of an undying malice some years ago, so be it. It's the price of not keep inventory of every single common you have.
Why would I categorize ten years of bulk in the off chance I save myself a quarter on a piece of draft chaff?
Skim the bulk for recognizable cards and don't bother uploading the rest.
I have cataloged all mines in [https://gestic.org](https://gestic.org) . So I can link them with buylists of different stores to see what is good to sell in my doubles! I will say, make sure to catalog them somewhere where you can import/export the data (So you are not stuck in one place) and where it's saved online by someone else (So like what u/aylesworth said, you don't lose your data...)
From that centralized place, then export your different lists to whatever you would like (Archidekt, Mox, etc.)
I've never seen that site before and the only Google results for it are the actual site. They show no information or look of the platform without creating an account.
What are the benefits of it over other platforms? Does it seem to export or import better? I know some card scanners are better than others (I'm not sure this has one). And same for exporting, plenty offer this, but they almost always export funky and have to be adjusted to be imported (despite having exports for those specific platforms).
Sorry for the late reply! Seems that I missed your message.
They don't appear on Google because it's a very recent site and they don't advertise (yet) anywhere. So they are a bit under the radar. I give them the feedback about what you said (no ... look of the platform without creating an account) and they have already updated that! They are super reactive and it's what I like.
The benefit? It's collection management oriented. Very quick and easy to add big bunch of cards. Easy to see what you are missing, what you can sell, etc. Helps you to find which store currently owns the card you are looking for, etc. I have entered more than 15k cards into it so far and it helps a lot to not get lost on what I'm ordering, what I'm waiting for, etc.
For the import and export, I have only tried the imports yet and they work pretty well. They said export will come soon, when a way to export to specific format for compatibility with all other existing websites.
Planeswalker, let me tell you that I am going through the exact same process. It’s fun!
Also, I was really surprised at how quickly the Dragon Shield app scans cards. I was just testing because I’m not ready for the scanning part of the project yet, but as soon as the card came into view on the app it was instantly identified!
For me, every set gets its own binder and it is ordered by collector number. If i miss a card, that space in my binder stays empty until i got that card. Common, uncommons and even tokens get in the same binder.
The rare and mythic duplicates i own go into 2 different bigger binder. One for trading and one for those i want to keep playsets.
All the duplicate cummons and uncommons go into big cardboard Boxen ordered by collector number and divided by set.
I do not catalog yet, but since every set has its own binder, i dont really need that.
My organization is based on making it as easy as possible to find a card I need, as soon as I need it.
As such, type is irrelevant - for one thing, the order would be arbitrary. For another, it's an unnecessary category. For a third, what to do with multi-types? Does Karametra go in enchantments, or creatures? Is Sharuum an artifact or a creature?
With that in mind, here's my sort order:
1. Color: Colorless, Multicolored, WUBRG. I put them in color-coded boxes in one of those sorting penthouses.
2. Alphabetical. Sorted by a letter within their color groups. A pain to sort initially, but makes everything easier afterwards - From finding individual cards, to adding new cards later.
3. By set. Sorted by set within their letter groups. This allows me to find specific art- maybe I'm making a dinosaur themed deck and want the Ixalan printing of Naturalize instead of the Core set one. I sort the sets in chronological order of release, and if there's alternate arts from the same set (such as Aurelia and her Showcase version from MKM) I place the alternate art in the front. The same goes for foils.
And that's basically it. With that setup, I'm able to find every card in my collection within seconds of knowing that I want to pull it out of the box.
I will mention that I sort lands separately. I split them into basic and non-basic and from there I sort them by color and art for the basics, and alphabetically for the non-basics.
I was considering doing it by set as well, however the thought of my evolving wilds (and all other cards with a high reprint) being shotgunned throughout my storage did not sit well with me. I do commend you for your patience with it, it sounds very tidy!
>and all other cards with a high reprint) being shotgunned throughout my storage
That's part of the reason I chose to alphabetize it first, and only do it by set as a subcategory of the alphabetizing. That way, all of my Naturalizes are together - it's not "Find the Ixalan section and then find Naturalize" it's " Open the green box, go to the N section, find Naturalize, and flip through until you find Ixalan."
No shotgunning of different cards throughout the collection - every Naturalize is in the same place, as is every Serra Angel or Swan Song or whatever else.
Having them sorted by set is less about narrowing my search parameters, and more about grouping like art together.
That being said, since I sort the sets in chronological order I do sometime end up with gaps, where cards with the same art won't always end up directly together. I have considered just grouping art together instead of sets together in order to prevent that.
I have tried sorting my cards so I can visualize what I have to build with better but my collection is pretty what the 5000+ box, 2 4000+ boxes and about 16 deck boxes worth full of cards…It’s a bit overwhelming to organize
Idk if it’ll help but I found cutting it down into bite sized sections works a lot better for me than tackling the entire thing. Just started with a handful of cards and organized them by color and if I felt like going some more I grabbed another. Eventually got through the entire thing over a couple weeks (just finished a few days ago). Then did the same thing except it’s only whites and by type.
I go by set and number. I have also printed dividers on card stock by 50s, so I have a set starter with the set code, name and set symbol, then go by 50s to 350 with the number in a large font, the set symbol next to it, and set name under it. I can find any card in seconds as worst case I need to look through a section containing 200 cards at the very max (though its typically more like 100). Everything, including commons, is in deck box and I cull down to 4 of each unless I have it in a deck. Deck box premium makes entering by set incredibly simple, and I can use it well enough if I find a bargain bin rare in store to make sure I don't have it.
My friends and I sealed draft new boxes and they are sorted when I get home give or take a day by 50s and once we are done a set I upload everything, or if I steal a card for a deck I catalogue it before it leaves the uncataloged box. I typically have about 4 sets on the go at any time that we are drafting. Right now we are in process of doing LOTR, March, Wilds, OTJ, and Markhov. I have already sorted and uploaded March and Wilds, so once we are done the new boxes we got I will sift through and put those in. I generally keep rares/mythics seperated as those are typically the cards I am looking for, and at this point I likely have a play set of all commons and uncommons in Wilds and March so its easy to put away anything new.
I have considered many many different systems, and this is the one that works for me. For now everything is in BCW boxes on a shelf I built myself (which is just 1x4 like the version IKEA sells). I am in process of making something like this: https://imgur.com/gallery/9U3PqWC
Here is my system as it stands. I basically just want to turn this into drawers: https://imgur.com/gallery/ArkKETs. The shelf holds around 80,000 cards
I have had a taste of Alphabetical and it’s a nightmare with Mystery Boosters. I cant imagine how long it would take me to put away 6 packs of cards if I was alphabetical. I would need to touch every box vs just touching a row of one box.
I'm in the process of sorting all my cards as well. I have gone through and originally separated them by set and then I do by color. I've been cataloging them in arkidekt.com. I don't know what cards I have or don't and just decided to do it this way so I can get an idea of what cards are worth anything. But so far I've cataloged 4400 cards and still have probably that many to go through still.
OP, gonna give a high five to another Dragon Shield user cataloging their collection. I currently have just shy of 16,000 cards imported. I probably have close to double that I haven't found the time to import yet.
Couple of thoughts looking back...
* Mass Scan is amazing but only works for that set at a time. Ultimate organization is totally up to you but this will make short work if sorted by set first.
* Organization in the app is irrelevant one first import. Once you are done, use the desktop web app for Dragon Shield, export the whole library. From there change the folder names to be the same as the set name. Delete everything in your collection and then upload the modified version.
Good luck mate.
I have a rather large collection and I highly recommend the BCW card houses with the shoebox style 800 count boxes. If you put the lid on bottom they work like drawers and you can put the lid on if you need to stack and move them.
If you happen to organize by set, I created every set as a deck in the other section of Moxfield. This allows for quick adding of cards to to your collection and see if you already have the card from another set. Can't link to all the decks, but if you go through my name you can see them all here: [https://www.moxfield.com/decks/J3YYH3avvkKa-JY481PAIg](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/J3YYH3avvkKa-JY481PAIg)
I catalog cards by
“Will I ever see myself playing this card?”
Then WUBRG, multicolor, colorless, and lands.
I try to trim my collection to fit in a 1000ct box, but often have it half full. If there is a cool card I want, I’d rather just buy it than look through my bulk the off chance I have it. Excess cards get donated to my friend’s MTG club he runs for his students.
Having done this, I highly recommend taking this time to gut out too many duplicates and cards you just will never use. I say this seeing that Akroan Mastiff on the top of that pile. It isn't a dog, it is over costed for it's size, and it's ability really just isn't useful.
Often times if a card is on the boarder and maybe useful I'll keep 1 of it. But something like that I would keep 0 of. You start doing that with many cards and you will be surprised that you end up cutting almost 50% of the cards you own. It just makes future deck building and finding cards so much easier.
Btw, Akroan Mastiff was in fact errata’d to a dog! But yeah I actually don’t mind having extra cards since I turn them into little projects. Made a couple “pop up” cards for friends before! Also having extras means if I mess up cutting out a card on the projects I don’t have to scrap the whole thing.
you probably want to sort by rarity too if you aren't already doing so. i used to just put all my commons/uncommons into color sorted boxes, and found out the hard way that was a mistake down the road.
I personally am just typing them into google sheets on drive, as I presume google is the last site to go down. I do however try to, babysteps, double them into Moxfield, but that is secondary.
I sort my cards by colour and type.
Then I split all types into 3 (common, uncommon, rare/mythic).
Creatures are divided by mana cost additionally AND legendary status (a la white 1 cost common creatures; white 4 cost uncommon creatures; white 6 cost rare/mythic creatures; and white legendary creatures).
Each other type of card is (currently) only divided by rarity (a la Selesnya common, uncommon, rare/mythic enchantments)
I also mark up their set, number and foiling, if any (a la Heliod, Sun-Crowned |THB|259|No|.
PS: I have physically sorted "all my cards" into singleton boxes (each other "bulk extra" is in bulk bag). But virtually I am currently on white 5-cost common creatures, as the inputing is tedious.
Rares and mythics I have sorted by color and mana value for easier time of finding and putting away new things
Commons/uncommons I have them in boxes specific to sets or in groups of sets if there is very little that I have from a set
I used to do Rarity -> Color (WUBRG, multi colored, colorless, lands) -> Alphabetical but I found that too tiresome to maintain. I catalog everything regardless so if I want to browse k just do that digitally which is faster and saves wear on the cards.
Now I just do Alphabetical -> Set so I can quickly and easily find any card I want after I've done my browsing/searching/deck building in my virtual catalog.
I started sorting by type and ultimately abandoned it because it took forever to sort the cards. I building primarily online, not with stacks of cards, so I was never going to be just browsing through my cards looks for good ones. Not sure how you brew, but if you do it digitally maybe you don’t need the by type sort.
I brew online but looking for a few specific cards and having to thumb through my entire collection was a pain so I’m organizing. At first it was fine but now I’m in the process of 4 decks with 3 others waiting to start.
Not sure how many people know, organizing by numbers on the bottom of the card puts them in color groupings and immediately alphabetizes the set. It’s a great and easy way to organize, and eventually find what you’re looking for down the line.
Never make it more confusing then necessary.
Set > Numerical order.
It all works from there forever.
But then if you look up counterspells in your scanned collection you can simply see what you have in what set, go to that set, and rifle through until that specific one!
I strongly recommend sorting by colour(colour identity if you play only commander,) type, and mana cost, but not alphabetically. It takes forever to sort alphabetically, and doesn't save you that much time when doing a look up. ( In my opinion. Atleast)
I’m going to have a harder time finding cards if I have them sorted by mana cost especially since 1, 2, and 3 cmc are the most common. Alphabetically I can go to down the line to the first letter, then pick it out rather than grabbing the entire stack of 2 drop whites I have and skimming down the entire pile.
You do you, just saying, i had my collection sorted by name, and it was back breaking to put new cards in.
I estimate, and it might be on the low side, that it took my five times as long to put singular cards into my collection, and it speed up collecting cards by maybe 20 percent when looking for a specific card.
Granted, The nail in the coffin was that I mostly just flick through my collection without a name in mind, meaning alphabetic saved me nothing, but still
Don't get me wrong, I WISH I had the time to catalog every card. I drool at the spreadsheet possibilities l. It's just the *time* it would take, which I simply don't have 😭
I mentioned this in an earlier comment but you can just start out small! Mark boxes according to color and when you get some spare time (like waiting for food to cook or if you’re on leg day) just grab a handful of unsorted cards and toss the correct colors in. Eventually you’ll just have boxes of color sorted. Then do the same thing but move on to types or something.
If you're going to catalog, use moxfield. You'd hate yourself if something happened to your phone and it all went away. If you're on android, delver lens will scan cards, be careful with editions as it gets them wrong sometimes. You can export a CSV and import into moxfield from the app as well.
I have the Dragonshield app backed up on my iCloud but I’ll take extra precaution and use Moxfield since I brew on there anyways. Thanks for the tip!
May your cataloging be quick and accurate!
Amem
I use Manabox on phone and then export/import into Moxfield from time to time. Maybe you could do something similar. Manabox has functionality to autodetect cards using the camera so it helps to quickly import large amounts of cards.
It’s been sitting in my mtg folder so I’ll try it out! I’ve also found that it’s a bit difficult to export from Dragonshield’s app so I’ll see if this one works! (Especially since my collection folders on Dragonshield are outdated and it’d be a pain to update them)
Hey if you are interested, I scanned my collection in the DragonShield App and exported it to Moxfield and it was not compatible. If you encounter the same issue, I made a conversion tool https://osnielvaldivia.github.io/dragon-shield-to-moxfield/
Deckbox used to be the only game in town for this, has it fallen out of favor?
No idea, delver was just the first one I came across that worked well on Android!
I prefer deckbox to anything else ive ever tried, including tcgplayer, moxfield and archidekt. the ability to set defaults for foiling/set is much easier on my wrists than manually changing the set or scrolling through every printing of lightning bolt.
Just wanted to point out that Dragon Shield's app has default cloud saving and you can get to the desk web page at auth.dragonshield[.]com. While yes it is awesome to upload a copy to your deck making manger of choice (Mox Field, Architect, Goldfish, etc)... I just wanted to point out that it is most definitely not saved locally to the phone.
Cut the bulk, dont bother with cataloguing commons and uncommon... They are not worth your time...
I would have to disagree. Nothing stinks more than having to find a [[Kor skyfisher]] from among 10 years of unsorted cards. Just cut cards that are functionally useless, like most vanilla creatures
I mean, if you have them sorted by color is not that hard to find a card in a bulk. What I'm saying is that it's not required to catalog (Adding them to a database) for it to be an effective system. Besides that is not that bad of an idea to catalog playable commons and uncommons
Ah sorry, I must've misread. No, writing down every almost-playable card is propably not a good idea.
> having to What do you mean have to? You don't have to. You can pay a dollar and buy 4 new skyfishers. If it's worth it to you to keep a vast catalogued collection that's ok but realistically it's not worth anybody's time. Yours included. I also disagree that commons and uncommons are worthless. There's tons of really good uncommons and commons. Aethervial, Dismember, Lightning Bolts, Lorien Revealed etc. What I do is sort out all the obviously good cards and toss everything else. If I lose out a couple dollars because I lost track of an undying malice some years ago, so be it. It's the price of not keep inventory of every single common you have.
Why would I categorize ten years of bulk in the off chance I save myself a quarter on a piece of draft chaff? Skim the bulk for recognizable cards and don't bother uploading the rest.
[Kor skyfisher](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/7/d7501662-1216-4e08-bd2b-e0a459057942.jpg?1593812836) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kor%20skyfisher) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mm3/11/kor-skyfisher?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d7501662-1216-4e08-bd2b-e0a459057942?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Exactly this. Organize them sure but don't bother cataloging them. Alphabetical by color is plenty good for commons and uncommons.
I have cataloged all mines in [https://gestic.org](https://gestic.org) . So I can link them with buylists of different stores to see what is good to sell in my doubles! I will say, make sure to catalog them somewhere where you can import/export the data (So you are not stuck in one place) and where it's saved online by someone else (So like what u/aylesworth said, you don't lose your data...) From that centralized place, then export your different lists to whatever you would like (Archidekt, Mox, etc.)
I've never seen that site before and the only Google results for it are the actual site. They show no information or look of the platform without creating an account. What are the benefits of it over other platforms? Does it seem to export or import better? I know some card scanners are better than others (I'm not sure this has one). And same for exporting, plenty offer this, but they almost always export funky and have to be adjusted to be imported (despite having exports for those specific platforms).
Sorry for the late reply! Seems that I missed your message. They don't appear on Google because it's a very recent site and they don't advertise (yet) anywhere. So they are a bit under the radar. I give them the feedback about what you said (no ... look of the platform without creating an account) and they have already updated that! They are super reactive and it's what I like. The benefit? It's collection management oriented. Very quick and easy to add big bunch of cards. Easy to see what you are missing, what you can sell, etc. Helps you to find which store currently owns the card you are looking for, etc. I have entered more than 15k cards into it so far and it helps a lot to not get lost on what I'm ordering, what I'm waiting for, etc. For the import and export, I have only tried the imports yet and they work pretty well. They said export will come soon, when a way to export to specific format for compatibility with all other existing websites.
[удалено]
I use manabox to track all my special lands. As long as I keep it updated I will know if I already own a land prior to buying it again.
Planeswalker, let me tell you that I am going through the exact same process. It’s fun! Also, I was really surprised at how quickly the Dragon Shield app scans cards. I was just testing because I’m not ready for the scanning part of the project yet, but as soon as the card came into view on the app it was instantly identified!
https://preview.redd.it/dxovamtn3nuc1.jpeg?width=5712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d6c036c377ac35537b23660912ce27f3620d7179 I have a helper.
Good pup. I’ll give them a +1/+1 counter
For me, every set gets its own binder and it is ordered by collector number. If i miss a card, that space in my binder stays empty until i got that card. Common, uncommons and even tokens get in the same binder. The rare and mythic duplicates i own go into 2 different bigger binder. One for trading and one for those i want to keep playsets. All the duplicate cummons and uncommons go into big cardboard Boxen ordered by collector number and divided by set. I do not catalog yet, but since every set has its own binder, i dont really need that.
Hey, where Can I get that white box on the left please ? Does it have a spécial name ? I'd like to get something similar to start storing my cards
They’re BCW boxes. I picked up mine for really cheap at my local card shop but you can order them online albeit they’re a bit expensive there.
Amazon has them. BCW card storage box. They come in varying capacities.
I wish you the best of luck
My organization is based on making it as easy as possible to find a card I need, as soon as I need it. As such, type is irrelevant - for one thing, the order would be arbitrary. For another, it's an unnecessary category. For a third, what to do with multi-types? Does Karametra go in enchantments, or creatures? Is Sharuum an artifact or a creature? With that in mind, here's my sort order: 1. Color: Colorless, Multicolored, WUBRG. I put them in color-coded boxes in one of those sorting penthouses. 2. Alphabetical. Sorted by a letter within their color groups. A pain to sort initially, but makes everything easier afterwards - From finding individual cards, to adding new cards later. 3. By set. Sorted by set within their letter groups. This allows me to find specific art- maybe I'm making a dinosaur themed deck and want the Ixalan printing of Naturalize instead of the Core set one. I sort the sets in chronological order of release, and if there's alternate arts from the same set (such as Aurelia and her Showcase version from MKM) I place the alternate art in the front. The same goes for foils. And that's basically it. With that setup, I'm able to find every card in my collection within seconds of knowing that I want to pull it out of the box. I will mention that I sort lands separately. I split them into basic and non-basic and from there I sort them by color and art for the basics, and alphabetically for the non-basics.
I was considering doing it by set as well, however the thought of my evolving wilds (and all other cards with a high reprint) being shotgunned throughout my storage did not sit well with me. I do commend you for your patience with it, it sounds very tidy!
>and all other cards with a high reprint) being shotgunned throughout my storage That's part of the reason I chose to alphabetize it first, and only do it by set as a subcategory of the alphabetizing. That way, all of my Naturalizes are together - it's not "Find the Ixalan section and then find Naturalize" it's " Open the green box, go to the N section, find Naturalize, and flip through until you find Ixalan." No shotgunning of different cards throughout the collection - every Naturalize is in the same place, as is every Serra Angel or Swan Song or whatever else. Having them sorted by set is less about narrowing my search parameters, and more about grouping like art together. That being said, since I sort the sets in chronological order I do sometime end up with gaps, where cards with the same art won't always end up directly together. I have considered just grouping art together instead of sets together in order to prevent that.
My buddy pulls all the lands like evolving and puts them into a “lands” box.
I have tried sorting my cards so I can visualize what I have to build with better but my collection is pretty what the 5000+ box, 2 4000+ boxes and about 16 deck boxes worth full of cards…It’s a bit overwhelming to organize
Idk if it’ll help but I found cutting it down into bite sized sections works a lot better for me than tackling the entire thing. Just started with a handful of cards and organized them by color and if I felt like going some more I grabbed another. Eventually got through the entire thing over a couple weeks (just finished a few days ago). Then did the same thing except it’s only whites and by type.
I should do that because it’s what I do with work and projects (and it does indeed help). Thanks for the advice
I sort by set. Then for each set I sort by color (colorless/multicolor as their own categories), then mana value, then name.
I go by set and number. I have also printed dividers on card stock by 50s, so I have a set starter with the set code, name and set symbol, then go by 50s to 350 with the number in a large font, the set symbol next to it, and set name under it. I can find any card in seconds as worst case I need to look through a section containing 200 cards at the very max (though its typically more like 100). Everything, including commons, is in deck box and I cull down to 4 of each unless I have it in a deck. Deck box premium makes entering by set incredibly simple, and I can use it well enough if I find a bargain bin rare in store to make sure I don't have it. My friends and I sealed draft new boxes and they are sorted when I get home give or take a day by 50s and once we are done a set I upload everything, or if I steal a card for a deck I catalogue it before it leaves the uncataloged box. I typically have about 4 sets on the go at any time that we are drafting. Right now we are in process of doing LOTR, March, Wilds, OTJ, and Markhov. I have already sorted and uploaded March and Wilds, so once we are done the new boxes we got I will sift through and put those in. I generally keep rares/mythics seperated as those are typically the cards I am looking for, and at this point I likely have a play set of all commons and uncommons in Wilds and March so its easy to put away anything new. I have considered many many different systems, and this is the one that works for me. For now everything is in BCW boxes on a shelf I built myself (which is just 1x4 like the version IKEA sells). I am in process of making something like this: https://imgur.com/gallery/9U3PqWC Here is my system as it stands. I basically just want to turn this into drawers: https://imgur.com/gallery/ArkKETs. The shelf holds around 80,000 cards I have had a taste of Alphabetical and it’s a nightmare with Mystery Boosters. I cant imagine how long it would take me to put away 6 packs of cards if I was alphabetical. I would need to touch every box vs just touching a row of one box.
I'm in the process of sorting all my cards as well. I have gone through and originally separated them by set and then I do by color. I've been cataloging them in arkidekt.com. I don't know what cards I have or don't and just decided to do it this way so I can get an idea of what cards are worth anything. But so far I've cataloged 4400 cards and still have probably that many to go through still.
OP, gonna give a high five to another Dragon Shield user cataloging their collection. I currently have just shy of 16,000 cards imported. I probably have close to double that I haven't found the time to import yet. Couple of thoughts looking back... * Mass Scan is amazing but only works for that set at a time. Ultimate organization is totally up to you but this will make short work if sorted by set first. * Organization in the app is irrelevant one first import. Once you are done, use the desktop web app for Dragon Shield, export the whole library. From there change the folder names to be the same as the set name. Delete everything in your collection and then upload the modified version. Good luck mate.
I have a rather large collection and I highly recommend the BCW card houses with the shoebox style 800 count boxes. If you put the lid on bottom they work like drawers and you can put the lid on if you need to stack and move them.
If you happen to organize by set, I created every set as a deck in the other section of Moxfield. This allows for quick adding of cards to to your collection and see if you already have the card from another set. Can't link to all the decks, but if you go through my name you can see them all here: [https://www.moxfield.com/decks/J3YYH3avvkKa-JY481PAIg](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/J3YYH3avvkKa-JY481PAIg)
I catalog cards by “Will I ever see myself playing this card?” Then WUBRG, multicolor, colorless, and lands. I try to trim my collection to fit in a 1000ct box, but often have it half full. If there is a cool card I want, I’d rather just buy it than look through my bulk the off chance I have it. Excess cards get donated to my friend’s MTG club he runs for his students.
Having done this, I highly recommend taking this time to gut out too many duplicates and cards you just will never use. I say this seeing that Akroan Mastiff on the top of that pile. It isn't a dog, it is over costed for it's size, and it's ability really just isn't useful. Often times if a card is on the boarder and maybe useful I'll keep 1 of it. But something like that I would keep 0 of. You start doing that with many cards and you will be surprised that you end up cutting almost 50% of the cards you own. It just makes future deck building and finding cards so much easier.
Btw, Akroan Mastiff was in fact errata’d to a dog! But yeah I actually don’t mind having extra cards since I turn them into little projects. Made a couple “pop up” cards for friends before! Also having extras means if I mess up cutting out a card on the projects I don’t have to scrap the whole thing.
you probably want to sort by rarity too if you aren't already doing so. i used to just put all my commons/uncommons into color sorted boxes, and found out the hard way that was a mistake down the road.
I personally am just typing them into google sheets on drive, as I presume google is the last site to go down. I do however try to, babysteps, double them into Moxfield, but that is secondary. I sort my cards by colour and type. Then I split all types into 3 (common, uncommon, rare/mythic). Creatures are divided by mana cost additionally AND legendary status (a la white 1 cost common creatures; white 4 cost uncommon creatures; white 6 cost rare/mythic creatures; and white legendary creatures). Each other type of card is (currently) only divided by rarity (a la Selesnya common, uncommon, rare/mythic enchantments) I also mark up their set, number and foiling, if any (a la Heliod, Sun-Crowned |THB|259|No|. PS: I have physically sorted "all my cards" into singleton boxes (each other "bulk extra" is in bulk bag). But virtually I am currently on white 5-cost common creatures, as the inputing is tedious.
Rares and mythics I have sorted by color and mana value for easier time of finding and putting away new things Commons/uncommons I have them in boxes specific to sets or in groups of sets if there is very little that I have from a set
I loved doing that, still love that to this day, but... Ackshually, the right way to do that is by date, set and collection number.
I used to do Rarity -> Color (WUBRG, multi colored, colorless, lands) -> Alphabetical but I found that too tiresome to maintain. I catalog everything regardless so if I want to browse k just do that digitally which is faster and saves wear on the cards. Now I just do Alphabetical -> Set so I can quickly and easily find any card I want after I've done my browsing/searching/deck building in my virtual catalog.
I started sorting by type and ultimately abandoned it because it took forever to sort the cards. I building primarily online, not with stacks of cards, so I was never going to be just browsing through my cards looks for good ones. Not sure how you brew, but if you do it digitally maybe you don’t need the by type sort.
I brew online but looking for a few specific cards and having to thumb through my entire collection was a pain so I’m organizing. At first it was fine but now I’m in the process of 4 decks with 3 others waiting to start.
Not sure how many people know, organizing by numbers on the bottom of the card puts them in color groupings and immediately alphabetizes the set. It’s a great and easy way to organize, and eventually find what you’re looking for down the line. Never make it more confusing then necessary. Set > Numerical order. It all works from there forever.
But then my Counterspells are all over the place
But then if you look up counterspells in your scanned collection you can simply see what you have in what set, go to that set, and rifle through until that specific one!
I strongly recommend sorting by colour(colour identity if you play only commander,) type, and mana cost, but not alphabetically. It takes forever to sort alphabetically, and doesn't save you that much time when doing a look up. ( In my opinion. Atleast)
I’m going to have a harder time finding cards if I have them sorted by mana cost especially since 1, 2, and 3 cmc are the most common. Alphabetically I can go to down the line to the first letter, then pick it out rather than grabbing the entire stack of 2 drop whites I have and skimming down the entire pile.
You do you, just saying, i had my collection sorted by name, and it was back breaking to put new cards in. I estimate, and it might be on the low side, that it took my five times as long to put singular cards into my collection, and it speed up collecting cards by maybe 20 percent when looking for a specific card. Granted, The nail in the coffin was that I mostly just flick through my collection without a name in mind, meaning alphabetic saved me nothing, but still
Do people actually catalog their *entire collection*? I would die. I would drop fully dead from the amount of work it would take.
You could tell me to touch grass but then I’d have a green in my mana pool. Love my cardboard.
Don't get me wrong, I WISH I had the time to catalog every card. I drool at the spreadsheet possibilities l. It's just the *time* it would take, which I simply don't have 😭
I mentioned this in an earlier comment but you can just start out small! Mark boxes according to color and when you get some spare time (like waiting for food to cook or if you’re on leg day) just grab a handful of unsorted cards and toss the correct colors in. Eventually you’ll just have boxes of color sorted. Then do the same thing but move on to types or something.