Reddit reviews Ultra Pro 9-Pocket Trading Card Pages - Platinum Series (100 Pages)

I'm relatively new to the game as well but wanted to play for a very long time. Some buddies at work finally taught me how to play and I have been totally sucked in. As a new player I can go through a few of the items that helped me.

For deck building: learn about the rule of nine. Just google "Magic rule of nine" and you'll find plenty of articles. The basic idea of it is if one card is good enough to have in your deck, it's probably good enough to have four of it. With that in mind and as a beginner deck builder, try to find nine card types (creature spells, instant spells, enchaments, relics, etc.) that you feel work well together, add 24 lands, and voila, you have a 60 card deck.

I know this is an over-simplification, please go easy on me vets, I'm still starting out and so far, the rule has worked out well for me.

For getting more cards: I learned a lot here in terms of what was a waste of money and what wasn't. I do a lot of eBay buying and found some very decent deals on cards. For instance, I was able to get three packs of the dragon's maze pre-release guild promos (two guild specific "booster" packs and four regular booster packs) for $7 each (six packs of cards for $7 when paying retail for them would have cost me at least $20-$24).

Fat packs: I feel these are a waste unless you can get them discounted. At MSRP of $39.99 for nine packs, you could have just bought 10 booster packs at $4.00 each for the same price. The deck boxes are flimsy cardboard and not worth it (in my opinion) and the cheap die they include can be found just about anywhere (a generic 20-sided die will do you just fine).

Pack deals on eBay: To increase my collection I bought several packs of the "4x of every common/uncommon" sets. These sets are just what they advertise, four of every common and uncommon card in a release set. I got mine for around $25-$30. Most of the cards in them are bad (they're mostly commons after all), but not every common is a bad card; Wojek Halberdiers comes to mind as a good common card. If you just want to increase your collection for cheap, I was extremely satisfied with what I got.

Deck builder's toolkit: Can be decent for starters. You don't get great cards in them but you do get around 100 lands (I think) for deck building and a variety of booster packs, so I feel it is a solid investment.

Buying booster boxes: Buying them at MSRP is a tough sell, you could almost just buy 36 of individual boosters for the same price. Depending on the set, if you can find a set for around $90 dollars, it could be a good value as that takes the price down to around $2.50 per pack.

Buying individual boosters: Let's face it, cracking a pack is fun but a gamble. If you are just going to buy a bunch of boosters anyway, you might as well buy a box for as cheap as you can find it to knock the price per pack down and save yourself some money. That being said, each pack has a chance at giving you something nice (I pulled an Archangel of Thune out of one of three booster packs I bought from Walmart yesterday).

Learning to play:

Drafting: I just got the nerve to try and break away from the kitchen tablet to attend a draft at my newer local games store on Saturday. However the one day I showed up is the day no one else did, so I can't speak to how well something like that goes for a new player, but people seem to suggest it a lot as an activity that is friendlier for newer people, although this is going to depend largely on the people in the draft. You can find a booster simulator here if you want to give drafting a try to see what it would be like in a real draft: Link

As I mentioned before, I am only about two months into playing the game so far and I can tell you I made all the beginner mistakes in deck building. I was advised by my friends to keep my decks to 60 cards and I came to the table with 87 (more cards just means I need to add more land right?). I built my win conditions on a card I only had one of in my deck and I certainly didn't have a secondary or tertiary condition for winning in mind. The best way to learn is to find some people to play with and play with them. Let them know you are new and just learning.

Supplies:
Nice deck boxes: Link

Cheaper deck boxes: Link

Card sleeves to keep your cards protected: Link

Nice pages to put your cards in binders: Link

Cheap but large 5" binders: Link

Example of common/uncommon set: Link

Boros event deck I purchased: Link


And lastly a deck I built that has been working reasonably well for me. I only present this as a possibility for you as you can find all kinds of decks that will work better and be cheaper, but hell, this is what I am using, so maybe you will find it helpful.


Boros R/W

Lands:

10 Mountains

10 Plains

4 Boros Guild Gates


Creatures:

Boros Elite - 4

Legion Loyalist - 4

Wojek Halberdiers - 3

Firefist Striker - 4

Guttersnipe - 4

Tajic, Blade of the Legion - 1

Firemane Avenger - 3

Arachangel of Thune - 1

Aurelia, the Warleader - 1


Spells:

Boros Charm - 4

Warleader's Helix - 3

Arrows of Justice - 4


Some things of note: The cards that cost money are: Legion Loyalist, Archangel of Thune and Aurelia, the Warleader, everything else can probably be gotten cheap. I was lucky as I pulled the Archangel of Thune out of a 2014 booster pack yesterday and just put it in (subbed out 1 Firemane Avenger) and I got the Auerlia out of the boros specific pack I got on ebay. I purchased three of the Loyalists for around $2.50 each as I already had one. If you wanted, you could easily find replacements for these cards and still maintain the basic idea of the deck (I haven't priced all of this out but I would think this deck could be put together for under $50 without too much trouble).

Playing it: I play the deck as an aggro deck, attacking early if my opponent doesn't have defenders, and then waiting for my Battalion mechanic to kick in when they do. Attack early with the Legion loyalist before your opponent's defenses are up. Keep adding soldiers to the field and using the battalion mechanic to boost them up in power (Boros Elite) get past their blockers (Firefist Striker) or just fly over them (Firemane Avenger). Use the Arrows and Warleader's Helix's to remove blockers from the field and trample them with an army of soldiers. The Boros charms are one of the most valuable cards in the deck. They can add damage by attacking your opponent directly or giving a hard hitting creature double-strike (Give Tajic double-strike when his battalion mechanic is up) or use it defensively by making your army indestructible for a short time (useful for opponents trying to off your third solider to prevent your battalion mechanic from kicking in).

Another high damage maneuver in the deck is use the Guttersnipes to add burn. If you are able to get two guttersnipes on the field and then follow the next turn with two Boros Charms or Warleader's Helix, you can do some serious hurt (Boros Charm for 4, each Guttersnipe does 2 more for a total of 8 damage from a single charm).

I have some other decks but I won't bother posting them as I doubt they would be very helpful to you; as I said, you can do easy searches and find cheap decks that do more: maybe this one or this one. Keep in mind, what you buy and build depends on the format you plan to play. If you are playing standard/draft/limited etc. you are going to be limited in what you can choose from. If you are going to play modern, I heard it isn't cheap to be competitive. I wouldn't try legacy as a beginner.


All I have for now. As I said, as a fellow new player who started out by buying a 2013 Core deck builder's toolkit on Amazon I think I have some idea of how you feel. Hopefully something of the above will be helpful to you.

Amazon is probably your best bet. These are the best card sheets available in my opinion, but it's unnecessary for, say, individual sets or master sets; I mostly use them for my binder of rare and valuable cards. These are probably the second best option and are good for any type of card, otherwise the regular ones found at Walmart and Target are fine; the only thing is they tend to sag at the bottom if the binder is standing vertically but it doesn't damage or affect the cards at all.

For binders, I haven't played around with too many different kinds, but I am very satisfied with the Avery brand. Here's the specific kind I use.

I started out with one binder that had anything over a dollar in it, organized by color. As I kept collecting, it became more irritating to go by price alone. ("Aww shucks this card is only worth 98cents, I guess it goes in the box, not the binder")

I eventually said screw it and bought a chunk of these and these

I made one album for each color, one for artifact & lands and 1 for multi-colored and "special" cards (promos, collectors ed etc). I have one separate album for Standard only cards, since that seems to be the most sought after type at my LGS.

Each album (including the Standard) are grouped by set, starting with the most recent. I include all rares and mythics (yes, even Vizzerdrix :P) and good/valuable uncommons and commons. I'm much happier doing it this way as opposed to setting a price barrier.

Honestly, just put whatever you want in there. If you are making the album solely for trading purposes, just load it up with things you feel others would want.

Laminated? Oh, I thought it was just one huge sheet of those card sleeve page things. You know, these things

I'm not sure on the amiibo card sizes, but something like this?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00095M5DQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Walmart and Target also sell them up front by the Trading Card sections.

Awesome. :) I did make all the binder covers myself; I'm surprised that they're not an official product, too.

My binder art (Photoshop files): https://www.dropbox.com/l/u3kR9BKSu29abmYtpOsJ4b

The actual binders: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A6V0JO/

The sleeve pages I use: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00095M5DQ/

I used this binder and these sheets. The binder fits the Base, Alchemy, Prosperity, Empires, Intrigue (2nd ed.), and the 2nd ed. Base cards. I can probably get one more expansion in comfortably.

As far as organization goes, I have a sheet for starting decks and one for the base victory cards and smaller sets of treasures (like Potions and Platinum). Base treasure cards fit in one of the mesh inserts.

Kingdom cards are sorted alphabetically with the randomizer card in each slot to save place (to build kingdoms I use an app on my phone). Each letter starts on a new sheet, so for example if there were 7 "A" cards I would skip the last two slots on the page so that "B" starts on a new page. This gives me some room if I need to insert cards from a new expansion.

I bought a small plastic organizing case at a dollar store for all the victory and coin tokens, which fits in one of the mesh pockets of the binder, along with the rulebooks and mats.

Everything stays put when travelling (even if the binder happens to get flipped upside down!).

5x 1-inch black binders for the datacycles. (1 binder just barely fits 2 cycles). Ashes + Downfall is slightly larger than a standard cycle, so I put my promos in with that.

1x 1-inch purple binder for Core. I wanted it visually distinct since it'll get a lot of use. I have two copies of Core 1.0, and was able to fit 6 cards/pocket. I'd be more skeptical about 9 cards/pocket. This binder is pretty thin (only 112 cards), but Core 2.0 is 132 cards and NISEI Core would be 147 cards. Before NISEI came out, I was planning to put my promos in this one.

2-inch binder for the 6 FFG Big Boxes.

2x [Set of 8 binder dividers] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XOJ9Z8W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1), one for the datacycles and one for the big boxes + NISEI

2x Ultra Pro 9-Pocket Trading Card Pages - Platinum Series = 200 sheets; I think I've got about half a box leftover?

Art composition was all done myself, and printed at home for basically free. I needed to use heavier stock for the side-of-binder art, but regular printer paper worked fine for the rest.

Probably $50 all total, and I was a stickler about binder colors.

The full-size finishing powder comes with a sifter. From a quick Google, it seems like silica can cause flashback but should be fine as long as it's ground finely (as Shiro's is). It'll just give a nice, glowy look in photos. For storing samples, I know some people store samples in binders with trading card sheets. I use plastic drawers and there's some affordable craft storage ideas that usually work for makeup too!

You can buy these in stacks from most collectible stores or amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Pro-9-Pocket-Trading-Pages/dp/B00095M5DQ/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1394132416&sr=8-5&keywords=9+pocket+binder
Might be able to find them at target or walmart, not sure though as I've never looked there.

I use FFG sleeves with these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00095M5DQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_AJwrDbBH96BSW

Some people use ring binders with pages with 9 pockets in them made for trading cards (http://www.amazon.ca/Ultra-Pro-9-Pocket-Trading-Pages/dp/B00095M5DQ) and use that to show off cards they have for trade/sale

others buy special binders made for trading cards that have the pages bound in (http://www.trollandtoad.com/Gaming-Supplies/5636-483-1019p1n10.html)

For small discrete components like resistors I use a binder, baseball card sleeves, and little plastic bags. I was doing the little drawers thing, but they end up taking up a ton of space. For bigger stuff such as your "delicate boards and shields" I have clear plastic shoe boxes on a bookshelf.

> This is something that has been in my mind a while. I’ve seen some people use binders and card sleeve protectors. (Think Pokémon card collection). While cheap, I’m not sure I love that solution. I worry that the pockets aren’t big enough for a stack of kingdom cards and they might slip out.

If you get good quality sleeves (like these guys), that's not an issue. Can easily hold 10-12 cards in each pocket if you only use one side.

I have a big fancy deck box for the treasures/VP cards, and all the tokens/mats fit in the binder. Randomizer deck goes in a cheap plastic deck box.

It's a great solution, but you have to get good quality sleeves or it doesn't work at all. Those cheapo 5-for-a-buck sleeves are garbage—I use one to separate the colored tokens but that's it.

Edit: pics https://imgur.com/a/Z0PFGOO

Edit 2: I also have dreams of building a sweet dominion box

For a wizard you could write a couple of the damaging cantrips on the front page along with their dagger or staff or whatever they have as a weapon (for attacks of opportunity). They should be spending most of their time looking at their spellcasting sheet but having a couple of low cost actions easily accessible is nice if their turn comes around and they aren't prepared.

Spell cards are nice for wizards too because there are just so many spells available but they don't keep track of spell slots and can be hard to manage once you get to higher levels and start to have more spells. If you go that route I would reccomend getting a pack of card pages to organize them into, that way you can go through them for spell selection fairly quickly and even have separate pages for spell list, spellbook and memorized spells.

Binders

Ultra Pro 9 pocket 3 ring binder sleeves

Ultra Pro 4 pocket 3 ring binder sleeves

Honestly card organization can be as cheap or expensive as you want, but these are what I've spent a majority of my money on in the last year 6 boxes of the 100 per box 9 up sleeves, 2 of the 25 per box 4 up sleeves and no less than 20 binders. Finally finished card organization project I started two years ago. Just need to print the cover pages/spine inserts.

Best belated birthday present to myself/husband ever!

I only sleeve cards that I'm currently using in decks, but everyone has their own personal preference. These are the products I use to sleeve and store my cards. I can vouch for the quality as they have held up remarkably well. I have one copy of every Netrunner release and everything fits into these binders. I'd estimate that there is enough space remaining for another two, maybe three datapacks. Not sure what I'll do when the next deluxe expansion comes out though!

Two of these binders, one for Corp, the other for Runner.

Two packs of these pocket pages to store cards in the binders.

Finally, I use these sleeves for my cards.

Here is the mobile version of your link

3 ring binder and these

I keep player cards in an Avery Heavy Duty Binder and Ultra Pro Platinum pages -

http://www.amazon.com/Avery-Nonstick-Heavy-Duty-Reference-79193/dp/B000FH1J6M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1381681145&sr=8-2&keywords=avery+heavy+duty

http://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Pro-9-Pocket-Trading-Pages/dp/B00095M5DQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381681190&sr=8-1&keywords=ultra+pro+platinum+pages

The encounter cards I keep sleeved in a BCW 1600 card box, with BCW dividers between each set -

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005LIF20O/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/146014

I don't keep the player cards sleeved, since my decks for this game rarely change and I tend to use expensive sleeves for my games (KMC Hyper Mat Clears). The Encounter Decks I keep sleeved in cheaper FFG clear sleeves so that I can set up a game quickly.

I have large binders, and use plastic sheets meant for baseball cards. I then made a spreadsheet to be able to search by name, CR, AC, HP, or the deck they’re from.

I have a couple of empty sheets in the front of the binder for ones that I will likely use in the next session


Ultra Pro 9-Pocket Trading Card Pages - Platinum Series (100 Pages) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00095M5DQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_UF21DbM2ENKCF

And these for the larger cards


Ultra Pro 25 (Twenty Five Pages) 4-Pocket Coupon Pages (3.5 X 5 inches, top load pockets) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005H7F0RY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_uG21Db29VE6R1

My spreadsheet (currently working on the magic items, and have yet to add the creatures/NPCs deck)


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uZ8gL5tQFYiG3Gv_W1UhZAE0n2yJ-qQQNPR8vPa-MHY

I sleeve all cards with these. http://www.amazon.com/ULTRA-Sleeves-PRO-FIT-Pokemon-STANDARD/dp/B00AXDBDK0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1413312197&sr=8-3&keywords=ultra-pro+sleeves

I then put them in these. 6 in each pocket cause I buy two datapacks generally. http://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Pro-9-Pocket-Trading-Pages/dp/B00095M5DQ/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1413312335&sr=8-7&keywords=ultra-pro+binder

Then I put them in these binders. http://www.amazon.com/Avery-Nonstick-Heavy-Duty-Reference-Binder/dp/B000GR7OYW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413312412&sr=8-1&keywords=4inch+binders

For decks I sleeve with these. http://www.amazon.com/Hyper-Matte-Sleeves-80-Pack-Black/dp/B00CJ7415M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413312464&sr=8-1&keywords=KMC+matte or these. http://www.amazon.com/Protective-Card-Sleeves-Count-Black/dp/B000UPL914/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1413312493&sr=8-2&keywords=dragon+shields

When I construct a deck I just put the sleeved cards into the KMC or Dragon sheild sleeves and that's it.

Hope that helps

It's just these: https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Pro-9-Pocket-Trading-Pages/dp/B00095M5DQ

Okay, those perfect fits sound great, I may order some soon.

And wow, the pic and vid are really appreciated! That's very helpful! Do you know anything about Ultra Pro Platinum Pages? I use binder pages as opposed to pre-made card books. From the pic on Amazon, it looks like the back of the page might be opaque, and thus I wouldn't be able to put a card facing the other way to utilize the back side of the page.

Here's the link to that: https://www.amazon.ca/Ultra-Pro-9-Pocket-Trading-Pages/dp/B00095M5DQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486528348&sr=8-1&keywords=ultra+pro+platinum+pages

I just like to use both sides of the binder page, as it uses half the pages in the end, and looks better to use both sides (in my opinion). I feel like it would be odd for them to make the back opaque, unless there were separate slots on the other side. It would seem like a waste of material.

Anything you know is helpful!

Another thing to think about now before you're heavily invested in sleeves is whether you're going to sleeve all the cards in your collection, or only individual decks and then unsleeve when you're done. Sleeves do wear and you'll have to replace the ones you use more often and they can be expensive. I started out sleeving everything and have since switched to storing my cards in binders and only sleeving the decks I'm playing with.

For binders, I like these pages: http://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Pro-9-Pocket-Trading-Pages/dp/B00095M5DQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456934727&sr=8-1&keywords=card+page

I don't have many games, so I keep the ones I want to play the most at the moment in these things and the rest in the original cases, which I have lined up next to my other console games on my TV stand.

If all you care about is storing cartridges, you could use parts organizers like this. I have one, and found that you can fit more than 200 cartridges per organizer if you store them vertically.

If you still want to be able to easily see the individual cards, then something like this may do

Question on those - I like to keep my character cards in a standard binder with these pages. I want to sleeve them, but at the same time, I like to have them in this format so it's easier to display / find them when building decks.

If I had those perfect size sleeves on them, how thick would they be / and would three of them still fit in one of those pockets?

I use the Ultra-Pro 9-pocket platinum pages for my cards. They are stiff so they don't warp cards (even foils) and last a long time. Target and Wal-Mart sell Ultra-Pro 9-pockets but they are not typically the platinum grade.

Here is what I bought for the upgrade cards:

Ultra PRO Platinum 16 Pocket Platinum Mini American Cards, 41mm x 63mm, Clear
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ARJ9AT0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_cznIxbB8TX3CQ

And this is what I bought for the Pilot cards:

Ultra Pro 9-Pocket Trading Card Pages - Platinum Series (100 Pages) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00095M5DQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_4znIxb6VJQJE9

If you get him some cards, see if you can also find him a sweet card album! If you live in the US there is a large selection on Amazon.com, here's one of the albums. Shops that sell TCGs (Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, etc) will also usually have a few of those for sale, along with the card packs.

Another alternative is to get a bunch of these card-sleeve pages. They fit inside a standard 3-ring binder. Some 3-ring binders also have a clear plastic outer later that's open at the top or bottom, allowing you to slide an normal-sized piece of paper (or a smaller one) in there and make your own cover, which could be cool. Colouring book pages may fit also, with a little trimming.

There is an online version of the trading card game, he may like that, Pokemon TCG Online. I see in another comment you don't necessarily want him stuck to the computer all the time, though maybe YOU might want to make an account there yourself, it can teach you the card game via the tutorials. Another nice features of the online card game is that each booster pack of physical cards contains a card with a redeemable code for the online game. It'll provide the game account with the same type of booster pack the code came from. Pretty neat. At the least, maybe hold onto those codes for later.

I've been putting mine in binders, but most of my cards are since Magic 2015 and my husband and I have opened at least a booster box of each set except the last one. I use these pocket pages that have worked so far pretty good, putting up to 8 of each card in and then putting the rest (mostly commons and a few uncommons) in a separate box to give away or try to bulk sell eventually. which I assume is probably what you were given. I use a binder for each set and go in number order.

If they are all commons, I would probably not bother much sorting them. if you really wanted to, I would probably use those boxes posted and sort them first by set, and then by number (the number order also goes first by color, and then alphabetically.)