How long did it take you to catalog all your cards (Page 2 of 2)

I'm the same way as you wizard. I get my collection all catalogued, then I go and buy someone's collection and have more to do! I couldn't agree more with you HikingStick...that's a nice problem to have!!

Funny you mention that Paul, I'm actually working on organizing mine into sets.  Putting a playset of each card in a binder sorted numerically by set, with anything over four getting stored in a box.  That way, when I need a card for a deck, I just have to look in binders until I find them all.  So far I've started with my Mirrodin block cards, and am working outward from there one binder at a time.  Trying to get a block and a core set in each binder, although if I can get more than one block in a binder I totally will to save space

Thanks Paul! It definitely makes cataloging easier. I hate to say that I'm about to fill it up already though. But I guess that's a good problem to have!

The real treasure though, I must say, is my wife! I simply mentioned it once that it would be great to have an old library style card catalog cabinet to store my cards in and she took it upon herself to go on Craigslist and find one. She drove an hour and a half to pick it up and gave it to me in 2011 for Christmas. Yeah, she's definitely a keeper!

I was wondering.... how do you sort your multicolor cards?
You just have a separate "Color" category for each color combination?

I started in October 2011 and I'd say it took us the better part of an entire year to get completely caught up.

We were NOT diligently working on it, more like a night or two every few weekends. And we'd do quite a spurt whenever we got new cards. AND we were sorting and alphabetizing at the same time (which we did once, and then changed our system so we had to do it all over again and THEN we had a Magic closet catastrophe and had to do it ALL OVER a third time because boxes and boxes and boxes of cards dumped on the floor = BAD.)

Our current inventory is 55k+ cards and the new rule is NOTHING goes downstairs to the Magic cave until it's been "deckbox'd". Once it's done, keeping up is far easier and having this inventory tool that we can both access from our phones or iPads at any time has been SO awesome!

It's really a preference thing. For sets that are primarily mono-color (e.g., M12, M13), I put the multi-color cards in a single small subsection after all the color sections, but before colorless. In sets that have a strong multi-color focus (e.g. RTR, GTC), I put the multi-colored cards in their own sections and between the sections for the card colors (e.g., B - BR - R - RU - U - UW - W - WG - G - GB).

have any of you  hit that point while cataloging cards where you basically have to stop and wonder when you got so many cards? Or for those of you like myself who haven't been playing for very long or at least had a long hiatus in there, wondering when you got so many older cards?

I also find myself having a lot of single cards, but i think that's more to do with my  being a mostly EDH player and not seeing a point in keeping a bunch of duplicates.

It took me an entire day, but I'm constantly updating it.  Updating takes me an entire day once or twice a week.

I made a new Android app that scans MTG cards (you don't have to type the cards name, you use the camera), after you can export the list and import it in your deckbox.org account! I think this will help to catalog cards faster or keep the database up to date. You can get it from Google Play store or to see it without installing it, there is a  demo video . Also I've made a new topic about the app in General Discussion

Last edited by unimatrix088 (2013-07-04 11:52:18)

For iPhone there are at least two apps, iMTG and Cardsplice.

It's taking me a few hours each day all week (have to work and sleep after all). But here is the best process for my cards (I have good amount, 5 long boxes with 3 rows each). I sorted all the cards by set, then color, then rarity, then in alphabetical order. THen Copied and pasted the card list into a MS word file. Then just went down the line, counting each card and putting that number next to each card. Then I just copied and pasted that list per set and pasted it with the import card list and set the defaults per list. Seems to be the most efficient way to do this for large sets.