How I Sort, Store, and Organize My Pokémon and Magic Cards

Trading cards are something that many people grew up on. They collected, traded, played, and cherished them. Ask around, and you’ll hear stories of individuals talking about owning some form of trading cards, whether it be Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, Baseball cards, or whatever.

For myself, it’s a part of my childhood that I reclaimed for joy in a work-filled hellscape that is 2023. My partner and I both collect and play several trading card games. Recently, we learned how to play Pokémon TCG together.

(Shout out to the Prof!)

Most people like to organize their cards unless you’re the chaotic individual who throws them into a shoe box and calls it a day.

Now, I pride myself on one thing: organizing my cards. My organization skills outside trading cards are null, zip, and don’t exist.

In this article, I’ll discuss some ways you can organize your cards and how I organize my collection.

You can do this in a few ways, such as storing it in a box or binder.

By Set

There have been many trading card sets out on the market, some rarer than others. There are more than 90 Pokémon sets out on the market. The same can be said for Magic, and it is most likely the same for Yu-Gi-Oh (that I’m not familiar with).

Luckily, most sets have logos or a word code with which you can identify cards. This may be a tricker for earlier sets, but online resources are available.

For example, the Scarlet & Violet 151 has this logo:

Or for MTG, right by the name:

By Type

The next is by type! There are several types of cards for card games.

For Pokémon, it’s Pokémon type and card type (such as trainer, Pokémon, energy, and so on).

For Magic, it can be flavor (red, white, blue, black, and white) or type (creature, artic fact, and so on).

By Set Number

Most sets will have a numerical order in which these cards go in. They’ll often be displayed as 69/420 or 21/404 at the bottom of a card.

If there are bonus cards, then it might show 202/176. It depends on the set.

By Rarity

Another fun way is by rarity! Most cards can be sorted by common, uncommon, rare, ultrarare, etc. MTG and Pokémon both have methods of telling the collector if a card is rare.

Magic is by a color system.

Common = Black

Uncommon= Silver

Rare = Gold

Mythic Rare = Bronze

Here’s a nifty article I like that breaks down the Pokémon rarity!

By Name

It’s pretty straightforward, alphabetically! It may help you find specific cards for deck building, trading, or just knowing what you have.

By Illustrator

This one isn’t as popular as the rest, but some folks like to sort it by illustrator if they fancy certain artists.

Here’s how I like to organize mine

I keep mine in a mix of boxes and binders.

I’ll start by breaking down cards by a set. An example is Paradox Rift (Pokémon). Then, by type, mainly because this helps me put it into numerical order. Most sets go by type (grass, water, then fire, blah blah) when in numerical order.

After I get them sorted into types of piles, I grab a binder and some card pages. I don’t use a specific card page; I buy what’s available. A blend of Ultra Pro and other brands may be in one binder. The difference doesn’t bother me. The card pages, however, are top-loading, not side-loading.

Those card pages get tossed into a D-ring binder to help prevent curving and other damages. Binder size isn’t a concern; there is no specific 1-inch or 2-inch, just what’s available.

Then comes the arduous task of putting them into the binder numerically. Depending on the number of cards to a set I have depends on if I skip spaces between cards.

Some set numbers may be on the other corner for older sets.

I have one Pokémon set from 2013, Plasma Blast, on one card page because I only have eleven cards. If I spaced them all out, I’d waste a million pages, unlike Scarlet & Violet 151, which only misses twenty-four cards from the base set. I made spaces for them, so I didn’t have to move the cards down a spot.

Once the cards are in numerical order, I keep similar sets together. If I have the binder space, I’ll keep all the sets from the same year together. So Plasma Freeze will share a binder with Next Destinies and Plasma Blast because they came out in 2012.

Duplicates will be tossed in a box by type.

This process also applies to Magic cards. The only difference is that I will have pages with tokens and art cards with the base sets.

I do have one binder that I started yesterday that is a Pokémon Binder that is organized by Pokédex number.

All of my sets are incomplete. Most are missing expensive or difficult pulls, but that’s not a big deal. I just like the collection. Oddly, I’ll track what I’m missing on a Google doc. It’s weird, but I enjoy organizing and sorting cards.