Evernote

https://evernote.com/

What a wonderful application!  I use this application to keep track of all the cards that I need for each set.  I have a single notebook, and I have chapters for each set.  Then within the sets I have labeled out the card type, the rarity, the card name, and the number of cards I need to fulfil my playset.  But the best part of this is that I can have the application on my iPhone, iPad, and my Macbook Pro.  This way I can manage it from any of my devices and edit any of my lists to keep a running track of everything I need.  Normally when I am shopping I will use my iPhone, but if I am trading I will bring my iPad and use that to find cards I need, but when I am doing work at home with deckbox.org I will use my Macbook to edit my trades.

This works well when a new set comes out and I need to edit all the new cards I need after I open my pre-order boxes.  It works well when I have a trade in the hopper, and have to mark the cards that could be coming in so I don't trade for cards that are already coming in on a trade.  I do have to say I use it the most when I am shopping.  Again, I can also see what cards are coming in on trades, but it is so mobile that I can just reference my lists on my phone, I don't have to worry about carrying around my laptop or iPad.

Here is an example of what I have for Shards of Alara:

Blue M Tezzeret the Seeker 3

Gold M Ajani Vengeant 2
Gold M Hellkite Overlord 2
Gold M Kresh the Bloodbraided 2 (2)
Gold M Prince of Thralls 1
Gold M Rafiq of the Many 1
Gold M Sarkhan Vol 1
Gold M Sphinx Sovereign 3
Gold R Stoic Angel 2

Red R Goblin Assault 2

White M Elspeth, Knight-Errant 3
White R Knight of the White Orchid 2
White R Knight-Captain of Eos 1
White R Ranger of Eos 3

Here you can see the Type, Rarity, Card Name, and number of cards needed.  You can also see that I have Kresh the Bloodbraided with a (2) which means that I have 2 of them coming in on a trade.  This will allow me to know not to trade or buy this card because I will have the full playset.  I have had this issue a couple of times where I traded for cards that were already coming in for a trade.  Once the set is done I will erase the cards that I have full playsets, and if the set is complete I will just use the word Complete.  This will allow me to look up the set from the list and see that it is complete so I will not bother with looking at cards from that set.

Here is an example of what the application looks like.  You can see I sort the list on the left alphabetically, and each set has it's own note.  Then each note has the list of cards posted on the right.  There are sets that are complete, and then you can see I am almost done with Scars of Mirrodin with (1) coming in.

Now you can see what the application looks like on my iPad.  It shows the lists on the left, and the note on the right.  Every note will sync when there are changes, and each device will get the new changes no matter what device has made the changes.

This is a free application, and it does not work without an internet connection, but it will allow you to manage everything you need.  Now there are applications like deckbox.org that could do the same thing for you, and they did put a privacy setting on your inventory, but I have yet to go all in on the website and want to keep my inventory needs differently.  I have also found that there really is no website, or application out there that can manage my collection in the ways I need.  There is also no application that will give me the visibility that I want to see where I need to focus my resources.

So for now, I love Evernote for what it can bring to my collecting, and I can also keep my spreadsheets for what I have in my inventory.  Maybe someday I will be able to create that MacOS application that will do everything I need.

**EDIT**

I no longer use this application, but I use Apple Notes

24,769 to go, and got some more stuff

It has arrived!

Stopped up at my favorite LGS Mead Hall Games in Minneapolis and picked up this beauty today.

Not sure if I am going to open it or not.  I might just keep it with my Duel Deck and keep them sealed, but I do like having those cards free to build decks with like I do with my commander decks, but I am still on the fence.  I also broke down and finished off my Fetchlands, and picked up the final 3 Bloodstained Mires.  I know there is rumblings about the Fetchlands being reprinted, but I look at that from a collector, and having the originals will be worth more than the reprints.

I honestly hope they reprint them.  They are really good cards, and make game play much better.  The game is nothing without the competition and game play, and with more of these around would only make the game more accessible for others to play.

Also picked up this to finish out the set:

Now this is something that I would not open because I think it is just a collecting thing that I like to have.  I dont think it will go up in price, but it rounds out the collection.

I also picked up my last Stoneforge Mystic that I needed.  Now I have all the Worldwake rares, and just really need to concentrate on those last mythics that I need to get all the expensive cards in the set.  Still thinking about buying a seal booster box for the commons and uncommons that I need.

I have a Modern rare trade for sealed product coming in, so hopefully I will have another update.  I also was able to get a trade done for my last Scars of Mirrodin card that I needed to get my playset, so cant wait for that trade to come in too!

To foil or not to foil

So you have your foil cards...  I have been contemplating for quite some time if it is worth keeping all the foil cards I have in the case where I decided to start trying for a single set of each.  Would it be worth it?  Then, what all do I deem foil cards to collect?  Do I try and get them all?  Or just the main release ones?

I have been battling this question for quite some time, and I have always just put it off.  Keeping one of every card that I get a foil, and then trading the rest away.  I am just not sure what I will do.  Even as I write this, I am going back and forth in my head as to if I should try, even at a later date.

So for now, I am just going to keep at least one of each foil, just in case I decide to collect those foil cards...

I am leaning more toward not doing so, because I think they are stupid...

24,772 and counting

So today I got a very good trade come in.  I was able to get a large amount of Unlimited commons, and granted they were just commons, but now I only need 83 more Unlimited cards to fill that set.  I also got some Modern cards, but the Unlimited was the coolest part about that trade.  Also it looks like I only need one more Rare in Worldwake which is a Stoneforge Mystic, so that is pretty cool too.  I still need 14 Mythic Rares, and 274 Uncommons/Commons, but at least I am getting the rarer cards out of the way.

So all in all it was a good trade day.

Spreadsheet Update - Trade Tab

Here we are going to take a look at all the extra cards outside of the collection.  I call it the Trade tab because technically everything in this category is available for trade in order to complete the collection. This tab will look just like the Sealed tab by listing all the sets, Core, Expansion, and any opened special set that I have opened.

So you can see, we have all the sets listed on the left.  Then at the top I have split out the rarity with total column, and columns for Mythic Rare, Rare, Uncommon, Common, Land, Token, and Book.  We will get to the Book column in a second.

All of the rarity columns totals are being pulled from the set tabs in the Trade total sections.

Set Tab Total

We are looking at this section
_
  |
  |
  |
  |
  |
  |
  |
_|

















If you remember on each Set tab we have formulas that will look at the Trade columns and SUMIF up the totals by rarity.  This was done so we could see what type of rarity we had, and how much of that rarity we could put up for trade.

So on the Trade tab, we are taking all that information from all the Set tabs and compiling it to see the greater picture.  The sets are again split up by color to define the blocks, and Bold defines a Modern set, but we have added the same coloring for the rarity.  You will also see a dark grey only in the Mythic Rare column, and this was done to show that those are the sets without Mythic Rare cards.

Lets just take a look at a single set's formulas, and we will use Journey Into Nyx because we have values populated for that set.

Journey Into Nyx:
Column B: ='Journey Into Nyx'!$A$16
Column C: ='Journey Into Nyx'!$A$17
Column D: ='Journey Into Nyx'!$A$18
Column E: ='Journey Into Nyx'!$A$19
Column F: ='Journey Into Nyx'!$A$20
Column G: ='Journey Into Nyx'!$A$21
Column H: ='Journey Into Nyx'!$A$22
Column J: ='Journey Into Nyx'!$AE$1

You can see for the set Journey Into Nyx we are taking the totals from the Set tab ('Journey Into Nyx'), and we are looking as specific cells.  What are the $ for?  Well since we have a template for all our Set tabs, and you can find the same data in most of the same cells, we will use the $ when you define the cell to make sure that it does not increment when you copy a row to add a new set on the Trade tab.

What does that mean?  Well there are 4 new sets every year, and with those set adds every year I wanted an easy way to just copy a Row and paste it under the currently new set, and change the name of the set so that row would point to the new set tab name but keep the same cell values.

So, for the new set of Khans of Tarkir what I will do is create a 'Set tab' from the 'Set tab template' we created.  I would rename the Set tab to be 'Khans of Tarkir'.  Then I would go to the Trade tab, copy the Journey Into Nyx row, and insert the copied cells under the Journey Into Nyx row.  I would then rename the set name cell to be Khans of Tarkir, and change the color of the cell to light yellow to follow the Block separation.  Finally highlight the columns B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and J and click 'ctrl H' to pull up the replace sub-menu.  Find 'Journey Into Nyx' and replace it with 'Khans of Tarkir' and hit Replace All button.  This will replace the Set tab formulas with the set you are looking to change, but you need to remember to create the Set tab before trying to replace the set tab names in the formulas, or the replace will fail because the targets don't exist.

Khans of Tarkir:
Column B: ='Khans of Tarkir'!$A$16
Column C: ='Khans of Tarkir'!$A$17
Column D: ='Khans of Tarkir'!$A$18
Column E: ='Khans of Tarkir'!$A$19
Column F: ='Khans of Tarkir'!$A$20
Column G: ='Khans of Tarkir'!$A$21
Column H: ='Khans of Tarkir'!$A$22
Column J: ='Khans of Tarkir'!$AE$1

Just to give you an example of what I used to have to do before I started using the $ in the cell definition, I would do the exact same thing as above, but I would then have to go back into the cells and change the cell number because without the $, those number would change.  So if you copied that same row and copied it under the latest set, all the numbers would increment by 1 because of the way the spreadsheets work; 16 would become 17, and 17 would become 18, and so on.  Also in the same vein, if I were to paste the cells to the right by one cell B would become C, C would become D, and so on...

Now lets touch on the Column J used for 'Book'.  I have this formula looking at Cell $A$AE which is the total of all the cards that are in my tradebook for each set.
  - Earlier I explained that I wanted to keep track of all the cards in my tradebook so I could know what the value is on cards that I carry around with me for trade.  While all the totals on this sheet define the complete trading fodder in all the cards, the Book values is used just to define what I have in my trade binder.

Then at the bottom row I have the totals for each column which will give me a quick peek as to what the value is for each type of rarity.  I only find this important when I have thoughts of selling my entire collection.  Since stores really only look at valued cards, it is pretty easy to grab the Mythic Rare and Rare and set a specific % to how much I could get from a store, then lower that % for each Uncommons, Commons, and Lands.

Spreadsheet Update - Sealed Tab: Packs

So we have gone through the decks that WoTC releases, but now lets go through the sealed packs and the different variations of how packs are released to the public and what we keep.

I have a goal to have at least 1 sealed booster box per Core and Expansion set all the way back to Revised and The Dark.  Yeah, totally crazy but I am hoping to at least one day have a sealed box of Arabian Nights, Antiquities, and Legends but I really have only seen Legends for sale on IDeal808.com.

So the rest of this tab is going to be used to keep track of all the the sealed product I own.  The issue that I have hit with this tab through the years is that there are many different forms of packs.  I have tried to gather up the data on every type because I own many different variations from many different sets.

Dk = Preconstructed Deck
Bo = Booster Pack
Box = Booster Box
St = Starter Deck
Fa = Fat Pack
FB = Fat Pack Box

As you can see I have grouped the expansion sets by block, and separated the blocks by different colors.  There is no defined reason for the color other than to separate them from each other.  You will also notice that some of the sets are in Bold, those sets are the ones accepted in Modern, and the non-bold sets are Vintage/Legacy sets.  I know you can use Modern cards in Vintage/Legacy decks, but I needed a way to split up the older cards with the newer cards.  This also follows the way I have split up the cards stored in the boxes.

Column B, C, D, E, F, and G are used to keep count of the different products.
 *I keep track of opened Fat Pack boxes in Column G, there is no card count assigned to these counts, but I just like to keep track of how many boxes I have.

Column H is used to show the price of a complete Sealed Booster box that is manually inputed.
Column I is used to show the price of a complete Sealed Starter Box that is manually inputed.
Normally I gather the prices from www.abugames.com.

Column K is going to be the card count total for all the sets
Column L is going to be used to get the card count for Preconstructed Decks
Column M is going to be used to get the card count for Booster Packs
Column N is going to be used to get the card count for Booster Boxes
Column O is going to be used to get the card count for Starter Packs
 - Some of the older prices are based on deck rather than boxes of Starter Packs.
Column P is going to be used to get the card count for Fat Packs

Column R is going to be used to get a total price count of Booster boxes

Formulas
Column L: =IF(B2="","",(B2*60))
 - This will look at what is in cell B2 and multiply it by 60 as preconstructed decks have 60 cards

Column M: =IF(C2="","",(C2*15))
 - This will look into cell C2 and multiply it by 15 as booster packs have 15 cards

Column N: =IF(D2="","",((D2*36)*15))
 - This will look into cell D2 and multiple it by number of packs then by number of cards since booster boxes have 36 packs of 15 cards

Column O: =IF(E2="","",(E2*60))
 - This will look into cell E2 and multiply if by 60 as starter packs have 60 cards

Column P: =IF(F2="","",(((9*15)+80)*F2))
 - This will look into cell F2 and multiply it by ((number of packs * cards in pack) + land pack) since fat packs normall have 9 booster packs of 15 cards, and an 80 basic land pack

*If you notice, all the formulas for the count will do a check to see if the cell is empty.  If it is empty, then it will stay empty, but if there is a value in the cell it will preform the formula.

Column R: =IF(D2>0,D2*H2," ")
 - This will look into cell D2 and see if the value is greater than 0, if it is it will multiply the number of boxes by the price manual gathered, if not then it will post a blank cell.

So in this section we have all the Core and Expansion, then we have all the pack types, and we should be able to keep track of the numbers of each pack/box.  Then we will find the card count of the sealed products as well as the total prices of the sealed booster boxes.  We will use this later on the Total page, but for now on this page you can see the totals on Row 97.

Cell K97: =SUM(K2:K96)
Cell R97: =SUM(R2:R96)

Spreadsheet Update - Sealed Tab: Decks

So, now we have the set tabs all setup so we can collect the data and then see what we have, what we need, and how much everything is worth and how much we need to collect for every Core and Expansion set out there.  So now we are going to get into the weeds of taking all that data, and putting it into forms that we can use to summarize the entire collection as a whole.

Just remember, this is how I use the data to keep an inventory, average how much I need to spend to finish my collection, and to plan on how much more space I need to finish the collection.  I not only keep track of the dollar value of the collection, but I can get card counts and see what is available for trade.

I will be working backwards to the Collection Tab because that tab gathers data from all the sub tabs, which collects data from all the set tabs.

Sealed Tab: Decks

This section of the Sealed Tab shows counts and inventory of sealed decks that are in the collection. This would include Duel Decks, Commander Deck, From the Vault series and so on...

Lets take a look at the section:

Set Color Code:
Red = Need to get
Black = Have

Price Color Code:
Black = Need to get
Blue = Have

Total Color Code:
Green = Total

Just wanted to add that I use color to gain focus so that is why Sets Needed has a color, and Price has a color.

























Column Definitions
Column T: You can see that I keep track of the years these small sets were released
Column U: Sets and Set Names.  Here I try and keep everything together, like all the From the Vault decks, all the Premier Deck Series, Planechase and so on...
Column V: This is the count column, but it will also accept a 'O' which stands for Opened.  I wanted to keep track of the sets I have, but I also wanted to keep track of the sets I have opened for the cards to play with in my Cube.
Column W: I use this column to keep track of what I have paid to get the set.  In some cases I have put 'Trade' to define that I have traded something to obtain the set.
Column Y: Current Prices that have to be manually looked up
Column Z: Listed card count in the set, I am using this for the level set in the formulas, so if I own more than one set I can gather an accurate card count.
Column AB: Value total column where we will take the count column and multiply it by the current price column.
Column AC: Total count column where we will take the count column and multiply it by the listed card count column.

Column Formulas:
Column AB: =IF(V3="O","",V3*Y3)
Column AC: =IF(V3="O","",Z3*V3)

So what does this do for us?  This will allow us to keep track of all the subsets that are released, and we can also keep track of the ones that are open as well.  I should add, that any set that has been opened will have a set tab so that we can keep track of the cost of the set in the set tab and not a complete sealed deck, and that is why we needed the 'O' option so we did not double count the price and card count of the sets that were opened.