This blog is going to be about how I keep all my cards separated. I have gone through the majors of how I keep my collection separated, but is going to be about the cards themselves. What am I talking about?
This:
Sorry a little fuzzy. The car separator is in the back, and for every card that I have will follow the separator.
Dimension:
So we have these tan looking separators, and they are 2 1/2' X 3 3/4' cards. They are just a tad taller than the normal Magic the Gathering card, and have the same width. Why tan? Why not. Honestly though, they are tan because that was the extra scrap paper the printing store had on the cheap, and instead of changing the color I just kept with that color. And really, the color works well. It allows the label to stand out without being too bold, and it is a gentle enough color as a background for the magic cards.
For the strength of the separators, they are pretty firm. I don't remember the grade of the paper, but they are close to the strength of a magic card.
Basically what I did, I found a commercial printing place and gave them a sample of the separator cards I had and they matched up the paper with samples they had. Once they had the dimensions of the cards needed they figured out how many they could cut from a sheet, and they were able to tell me how many I get per sheet. From there, they told me how much a sheet was and you can go from there. I believe I bought 4 boxes full of these separators for about $400.00 US, and I ended up with over 90,000 separator cards. This price also included the cut cost for the printing place to cut the separators to my dimensions.
In the first order, there was two boxes full of separators, and I think my father paid $90.00 for that order, and there was about 20,000 cards. Cost of inflation, I think I made out with a good price, and I won't need to get any new separators for quite some time.
I should also add that a friend of mine saw my separators and got some cut from Kinkos, and they did not do as well of a job that the commercial printing place would do, but he also only spent no higher than $20.00 for a stack of separators. So if you wanted to go that way, puddle it up. I am also pretty sure you can just go to a paper store and try and cut the separators yourself.
Color Coding
I color code by rarity. Since I keep all the cards of the same color in the same box I wanted some type of distinction of the different cards. Now I need to remind you that back in the day there was no way to tell what the rarity of a card was by just looking at the card. Now you get the different color of the set symbol, so it is a lot easier to tell what the rarity is.
Common:
I stuck with just a basic Black. I also use Black for land and tokens.
Uncommon:
Here I went with a Blue because it is hard to read silver letters on a white background.
Rare:
Yeah, it is fuzzy... You can barely tell, but yes it is Green
Mythic Rare:
And of course, I went with Red
Labels
So the labels, quick run down; go to Office Depot, or Staples, or Amazon and pick up some Avery labels. I went with 1/2' X 1 3/4' labels with the part number of 5167. With Avery labels, you can also download the Microsoft Word template that will allow you to copy and paste your information directly into the cell, and it prints pretty well. I had some issues printing my labels in the beginning, where the drivers on my printer could not read the top margin, and I would lose that top row. But HP updated their drivers, and we are good to go now. I am pretty sure the normal consumer would use these labels as envelop return labels, but here we use them for Magic cards!
Now before you think about making labels and selling them, I already asked WotC if I could do that, and they put a stop to that in one e-mail. I can see why they would not want my crappy labels on no art separators, but hey I had to try.
In making the Labels I massage the data from the spreadsheet in order to get it to the format where it is really easy to cut and paste into the Microsoft Word cells. Basically I will get the data to the point where all the names will have the set underneath it, and then the Type - Rarity at the bottom. Once I paste in all that data, I will then color code the cards and print.
Once printed I take all the labels and place them at the top middle of the separators. If anyone really wants to know my keystrokes I can post something. Also let me know if you want labels for a set. I have most of them ready to print.
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