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Doomkaiser Dragon
Card# CSOC-EN043
Doomkaiser Dragon's effect isn't just for Zombie World duelists: remember that its effect can swipe copies of Plaguespreader Zombie, too!
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There’s certainly no shortage of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. With ten North American expansions, 23 Japanese expansions, tournament packs, starter decks and many, many promos and special edition cards, there are plenty to be had. Once you've moved beyond four or five booster packs worth of cards stacked here and there on your desk, you’re going to need a better way to manage your cards! Fortunately, there are plenty of options, and you can tailor them to suit yourself.
First off—are you a collector, trader, or deckbuilder? Perhaps a combination? Usually, how you decide to sort your cards will be influenced by what the cards mean to you. Collectors often like to keep their collections of cards in binders, displaying their complete sets with everything in order by card number and expansion. This makes it easy for them to display full sets and keep track of what they need to complete them. Traders usually like to sort by rarity, to get a better idea of what they have available and what they still need to get. People who accumulate cards to build decks out of them frequently like to organize by categories—monsters, traps, and spells—so they can find what they need quickly. It’s a lot easier to build a new deck if you know exactly where to look for the cards you will need.
Let’s take a look at some of the storage options available for card collections, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each, so you can get a better idea of what will suit your style of collection.
Binders and Binder Pages
Probably the most widely used kind of card storage, binders have a lot of things going for them. Looking through your cards is as easy as turning the pages of a book! Large binder pages hold nine cards (eighteen if you double them back to front), and small ones hold four or six. You can go to an office supply store and pick up a plain sort of binder, you can get one with a Yu-Gi-Oh! theme, or you can get one from a card shop, depending on how much money you’d like to spend and how high quality a binder you want. If your cards are really valuable and important to you, make sure to get a good quality binder that will keep them safe. Look for a binder that is acid-free or archival; a card shop is your best bet for one of these. It can take a while to sort your cards and place them one at a time in the pages, but once you’re done, it’s easy to see all the cards in your collection.
The binder pages should be also be PVC and acid-free. Acids in some plastics and vinyls will deteriorate your cards over time, so if your card collection is very important to you, make sure to choose archival, acid-free binder pages as well. A nice, heavy, good quality binder page will also last longer than cheaper, thin ones, so you might as well only buy them once instead of having to buy them several times.
Card Boxes
If you are the kind of person who buys cards by the box, then you’re probably going to want to look into card boxes as a storage option. Some people like to keep cards in the special edition tins or other Yu-Gi-Oh!-themed products, but a good source of card storage boxes is your local card or comic book shop. These are white cardboard boxes you’ll fold yourself, and they come in a variety of sizes, specifically designed to hold trading cards. There are small boxes that hold 25 cards, right on up to extremely large ones that can hold 5,000. A few sizes in the middle might be a good place to start. A brick-sized box will hold 200 cards, and the boxes can be stacked and labeled. Card boxes are probably the best way to store large quantities of cards—if you experiment with deckbuilding a lot, boxes are a good way to manage your collection. Monsters can go in one box, organized by set, trap cards in another, organized by set, and so forth, all clearly labeled on the outside. It’s not a bad idea to keep one box with "core cards"—Pot of Greed, Mystical Space Typhoon, and so forth—that you use in most decks so they are easy to reach.
An additional attraction for card boxes is the plain white cardboard surface, which lends itself to custom decoration. Take a card box with you to leagues and tournaments, and have your friends write their names on it, draw pictures of your favorite characters or monsters, or cover it with stickers. If you are consistent with how you organize your cards in the boxes—resist the temptation to just dump them in randomly—and label the boxes clearly, you’ll always be able to find the cards you need.
Deck Boxes
If you have completed decks you want to keep together, you might want to think about keeping them in deck boxes. Deck boxes are smaller boxes, usually made of plastic or metal, that are designed to hold 40–80 cards. They are usually sturdy, with an attached lid or means to keep the box closed, and some have dividers inside that can separate your side deck from your main deck. Cases that will hold several deck boxes are available from several different companies and are a good way to tote your completed decks to leagues and tournaments. Many duelists like to color code the deck boxes, so they can tell at a glance which deck is which. Just like the binders and boxes, look for archival or acid-free materials to keep your cards in best condition.
Soft Sleeves, Deck Sleeves, Toploaders, and Screwdowns
Protecting individual cards is also part of managing your collection. Before putting rares or foils in binder pages or boxes, put them in soft sleeves. Soft sleeves are inexpensive and will protect your more valuable cards from scratches when you store them. Most card or comic book stores carry them. For cards you are going to play in a deck, choose deck sleeves. Also called deck protectors or card sleeves, they come in many different colors, including metallic, textured, and holographic, and they will keep the cards you play with in top condition. Choose deck sleeves rather than soft sleeves for cards you will play with, since deck sleeves are sturdier and will do a better job of protecting cards that are handled.
If you have some single cards that are really valuable or mean a lot to you, toploaders or screwdowns might be an investment you’d like to make. Toploaders are clear, rigid plastic sleeves that will not bend, designed to hold a card that is already in a sleeve. Toploaders aren’t very expensive, and they're worthwhile for people who keep their cards in boxes. Screwdowns are two-piece acrylic displays, varying from 1/4” to 3/4” thick. The card is placed inside, and the two pieces are screwed together, enclosing the card in a thick protective case. Screwdowns can be displayed singly on small easels, or you can purchase screwdowns that will showcase more than one card and can hang on the wall.
Well, there is an overview of many different storage ideas! Take a look at your card collection, see what you tend to accumulate, and think about what you like to do with it. Pick up some soft sleeves to protect your foils. If you’d like to show off completed sets, go with binders. If you like to take a lot of cards with you to trade at events, binders or boxes will work for you. If you have a lot of cards and you like to experiment with different decks, work out an organizational system that works well for you with boxes. Keep your decks ready for dueling by placing them in deck boxes, and protect your play cards with deck sleeves.
Once you’ve sorted out and organized your card collection, you might find you have a lot of commons or other cards you have too many copies of. Rather than clutter up your binders or boxes or leave them piled around your room, why not give them to a younger sibling or a friend who hasn’t really gotten into the game yet? Who knows, maybe you’ll end up introducing him or her to your local league and tournament system! You could also get together with a few of your friends, pool these extra cards, and come up with your own creative Limited play ideas, which will sharpen your play skills and generate a lot more use out of the cards than just sitting in your room. So make that a goal for the upcoming weeks—gather all those cards together, sort them out, think about what you want to do with them, and get the storage materials you’ll need to do it. Good luck!
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