Not surprisingly, trading card game players tend to neglect organizing their cards when starting their collection. Opening Booster packs and talking about the cards you pulled is just so exciting while sorting them out takes away precious time to play with them. Obviously, at one point it becomes important to be able to find the cards you need to make your decks and that’s when having a well organized collection becomes critical.
All players will also need to consider that the upcoming Set Rotation in Disney Lorcana will limit the cards you can use during some Official events while those using the Infinity Format event (and any casual ones) may still need you to be able to go through all your cards in order to create some fun decks. These different needs can benefit from having a well organized collection that can allow you finding your cards quickly and that’s why I decided to have a look into how your Lorcana collection can be stored. However, I will NOT cover every method and accessories out there as I want to keep the list interesting and helpful for both experienced and new Lorcana players.
Displaying vs Playing: What Do You Want to Do With Your Collection? One of the very first aspect you should consider about your collection of Disney Lorcana cards is whatever you want mainly to display it or if you need to organize it in order to play with your cards. Lorcana is a very collectible TCG filled with rare cards like Promo, Enchanted, Promo-Enchanted, and, from Fabled set onwards, Iconic and Epic. These beautiful and valuable cards may deserve to be stored in a way that makes easy to look at them and enjoy their artwork. For example, these cards can be kept in rigid plastic Toploaders or Magnetic Card Cases and displayed with or without a frame so that the cards can be enjoyed constantly. Alternatively, you can keep these cards in a binder in order to have all your collection together while still protecting the cards from direct sunlight and dust.
Together with a few high rarity cards, your collection will mainly include a large amount of cards that may not have the same value of an Enchanted although they may still be extremely beautiful. Storing these cards the same way you may store your Enchanted ones may take up a lot of space and may not be great if you need to make new decks frequently. On top of that, you will likely also have to organize all your spares, including the many copies of commons and uncommons cards that you may have pulled from booster packs. These very low rarity spare cards have almost no value and they are generically referred as “bulk”. Binders are one of the most effective way to store your cards as they protect the cards while keeping them well organized. They also allow the cards to be ready accessible so you can enjoy their artwork any time you need. On the other hand, Storage Boxes or the Illumineers Trove can also be effective ways to keep large amount of cards in a smaller space and they can also be a budget friendly solution, in particular if you want to use the Troves as they also come with booster packs and game accessories.
Showing the Artwork – Tailored options For collectors
One of the most practical aspect to consider when deciding how to organize your collection is how many cards you have and how your collection will grow and expand in the future. Some Collectors want to have every single card from a set in standard and foil version together with all the Promos and the Enchanted versions of these cards. These collectors, usually referred as “Completionists”, may aim to have only one copy per card and they may not be interested in using these cards for building sets. In this case, it is likely that organizing the cards by set using high quality binders like Dragon Shield Card Codex Zipster or the Ultra PRO Deck Builder’s Premium PRO-Binders will be good options as they allow to display all your beautiful cards while still protecting them. I personally prefer those with 12 pockets per page so I can keep four copies of six cards per page while having 2 sleeved cards per pockets but it all depends on personal preference. Let’s also not forget that Ravensburger made a few great binders too that are perfectly themed for Lorcana.
Using binders will likely be a good option even after Set Rotation as the aim is to collect, display and store each set individually. The cards from older sets that will be reprinted after Fabled will still be collected as part of a set together with all new cards. The only aspect to consider after rotation, will be the size of the binders as the new rarity that will be released in Fabled will increase the size of the sets going forward.
Protect the Realm – Tailored options For collectors
Obviously, people that loves Trading Card games do not necessarily only collect but they are likely looking forward to play with their cards. In this case you may either be a Competitive Lorcana Player or a “casual”/ “enthusiastic” Player. In the first case, you would likely aim to have four copies of all the cards from the different sets in order to be able to create decks for any type of format. Having all cards from all the sets will make easy to file multiple decks like those needed for the recent “Triple deck Constructed” format used at Worlds for example or to come up with very effective strategy in the Infinity format that will still use all cards ever released in Lorcana after Set Rotation kicks-in. More casual players may instead focus only on a few Ink colours or archetypes of card they like to play or collect. These players will still be able to compete in different game formats obviously although they may need to purchase a few single cards to widen their options.
In both cases, the priority of Players is to have a collection that is easily accessible.
Depending on their budget and available space, Players can usually benefit from organizing their collection by Ink Colour instead of by Set. Having all the cards from one Ink Colour in one place can make very easy create a deck that uses those cards instead of having to go though all the Set dedicated binders or boxes. In this case the dual-Ink cards can be stored together with the first Ink colour showing on the cards as the order of them is fixed.
Among the available options, card boxes are likely to be the more efficient options as they allow to store a lot of cards together in a small space. Inside the box, you can then decide to order your cards by Ink cost (my preferred option) or by set and I recommend using card spacer to separate them in group. I also strongly recommend to sleeve them to have them ready to be used in your games. Among the best box options you can consider Dragon Shield Fortress Card Drawers or Ultra PRO Magic: the Gathering Mana 8 Dropship for large collections or Gamegenic Card’s Lair for smaller collections/grouped cards.
Alternatively, the Illumineer’s Troves can be very good storage boxes as they can hold 800 non sleeved cards or 400 sleeved ones. After set-rotation, each Ink colour will have a maximum of 45 cards per set (excluding Epic, Iconic and Enchanted you may want to store differently) meaning you can have four copies of all the cards from 2 or 4 sets in a single trove. The new Ink themed Boxes available through the organized play or the newer Gift Boxes (Lilo and Elsa) are also great options as they can store half the cards of a Trove. These Disney Themed product are particularly useful if you are a casual player as you may not have a large collection. Overall, I found these Gift boxes to be amazing options to play Pack rush or Chaos Sealed formats so you can enjoy some great games at your locals while stocking up storage boxes!
Final Recommendations
When it comes to beautiful Disney Lorcana cards, I always recommend to sleeve them to preserve their quality and making sure they do not get damaged over time. I personally use some cost-effective Sleeve Kings Perfect Sleeves to protect all the cards as I can then easily slit them into a Dragon Shield Standard sleeves any time I use them for an event. This approach works also nicely whatever you are planning to use binders or boxes or mixed approach.
Keeping a flexible approach is actually a very important aspect when it comes to managing your TCGs collections. In fact, everyone has a very personal approach to the way they collect and play and this should always be reflected in the way you store and display your cards. I personally love using binders for the cards I need to access quickly to make my decks but I also use boxes to store all my spares and my bulk. Other players I know only use Troves and Boxes to store they cards although they may have one large binder to store their Enchanted, the promos and any signed card. Whatever approach you chose when you started playing Lorcana, it is a good time to have a look to your collection and assess if the Set Rotation can be an opportunity to re-think your strategy. This is a not negligible topic as the number of Disney Lorcana cards will keep growing every year while the sets that can be used for events will keep changing on an yearly basis. On top of that, who knows which super-fun formats will be created and which cards they will use?
