Card storage?

[The Lobster Queen]

So, I'm sitting here surrounded by a plethora of loose MtG cards, painstakingly separating them by block, and then into numerical order. This is in preparation to put them back into their binders...

...because I got a new booster pack. emotion_facepalm

I'm wondering how the rest of you store your cards? Is anyone else totally obsessive-compulsive about everything being where you can easily see it, and in order? Or are you like a friend of mine, who just throws everything haphazardly into a box?

Or are you somewhere in between?

[Toltirr]

A bit between.
'll have boxes.
Proper Card Boxes with rows and dividers and I'll divide things up.

Usually by type if not Set. Depends on what I was storing away and how big the collection was at the time.

[Emrakul]

Depends on the size of the collection but I usually have a good number of thousand count boxes at least organized by set, some are also sorted into colors (and when I'm feeling really bored alphabetized). I also separate out the playables and end up storing them separately from the crap. Theres alot more crap then goodies so the bigger boxes usually get filled with the worse stuff and the goodies end up grouped in one large box.

[oHoN]

I used to order my cards by color/set in boxes until I kept getting cards drafting and whatnot and just started piling them all together. It has made for very long sessions of searching every random box to find that silly common I've decided I need but thought I never would, but it still takes up less time than sorting it all properly.

[Willexia Rennar]

I have a bit of a system going for my stuff.

1st, I sort the boxes out by set. Then I separate the commons and uncommons from the upper rarities before sorting them into the 5 colors, multicolors, and colorless. Then, things get sorted out by type: creature, artifact creature, instant, enchantment, artifact, land, artifact land.

After that, it goes in order of ascending CMC, with tied CMCs going from lightest color weight to heaviest (example: a 2G creature would come closer to the front of the box than a 1GG creature). After that, cards get sorted in their CMC range in alphabetical order.

Finally, I put the sorted groups in as follows: Greens counterclockwise to whites, 2-colors (GR, GB, GU, GW, RB, RU, RW, BU, BW, UW), then 3-, 4-, and 5-colors in the same fashion, and finally colorless stuff, with a marker in between each color group noting what's in front of it.

...Then I go do that with the rare cards in their own specific box. XP

In short, when sorting my collection, I go batshit OCD. It's time-consuming, but it does keep things nice and orderly, not to mention easy to find later.

[B.Wilson]

depends how far you wish to go, i know a guy who has binders of cards and sorts the pages basically by number, leaving spaces for any cards he missed, he then also has a seperate section in the binder for foils

[Dark-oneechan]

I have my shelves for the binders and deck boxen. The binders consist of one full of what I call "deck parts", One with decklists, articles and statistical crap and one with more generic tradeables and rares. Then there are the fatpack boxes packed with lands, a stack of 1000 card longboxes with whatever block is in rotation currently when I am tinkering with standard/drafts. And then we come down tot he 5000card archive boxes. Which i generally empty the longboxen into. These I just sort by colour.

[Liquidor]

I put Trade in unremarkable $1 binders. Sorted by Rarity.

I have loose cards in fatpack (or 1k cardboard) boxes. Sorted by Format.

Sorted playsets are in binders. 8 to a sleeve. 4 facing one way, 4 facing the other way. Numeric order.

Unsorted playsets are in 5k cardboard boxes. Color clumps.

Decks are in fatpack boxes as well or deckbuilder toolkit boxes.

[Zeddicuus]

I have a 1000ct box for each colour, artifacts/multicoloured for the commons, all sorted into playsets at a max of 8 of a given card. Uncommons are sorted by colours/artifacts/multicoloured into two 1000ct boxes seperated by dividers. Rares are sorted by colours into the different card types in a binder. Decks are stored in small tin lunchboxes that hold 5 decks each, seperated by dividers.

Unsorted cards are stored randomly into fatpack boxes that have been designated for unsorted, to be worked upon at a later date I determine when that date randomly arrives.

Angel card are stored alphabetically in a special binder, with gaps in them for the ones I am currently missing. once a few sets come out with Angel cards that I acquire, those end up in the back of the binder until I do an overhaul on the sorting to integrate them into the proper places.

[Kosher Coffee Bean]

I reserved a good day of the week to just sort my cards because I was just like you. I had them in boxes, I had them unorganized, decks were getting mixed in with other decks, lands were a wreck, it was complete chaos. I started off with just using one binder, until I realized I have too many cards to shove all of them into a binder.

So now I have one binder per series that I have (Plus an extra binder for my Trade binder). ie, DA has their own binder, Innistrad has it's own binder, 2012 core, ect. And it goes down the line from there. Land I keep in mini boxes by type of land. And then my decks are assigned by color of deck box (I have 9 different colored boxes) lined up on the shelf along with the fat pack boxes, ect. (I'm a box hoarder, really)

Then below that shelf is another shelf where I keep all of my binders. And then I have a cheap tub-drawer system that holds my playmats, card sleeves, extra card pages, instruction booklets, rule books, counters, dice, ect. Took me a few hours to really coordinate the whole system, but I'm so thankful that I did it. I can easily access a card, see how many multiples I have of the card, and find the card accordingly.

So that's pretty much how I do it. =)

[brotherofAnubus]

I keep my rather small collection (started playing when Dark Ascension was released) in three places; A cardboard Long box meant to hold 800+ cards, which I hold my commons, uncommons, and other such cards that're less than a dollar in value. A three-ringed binder holds my excess cards, regardless of rarity, and a fat pack box holds all of my lands that're less than a dollar in value.

Now the cards in my long box are separated by color, using excess cards in sleeves as the separation "devices". The most expensive cards ($10+) in my binders are also in sleeves.

[Dark Hunter Akala]

I organize the same way you do, by numerical order within a set, but only for commons and uncommons. Those are all in boxes stacked up.
The rares and mythics I keep in binders sorted by color, and the decks I play I keep in a nifty storage box.

[LiaThistle]

Geez...umm...I have four main boxes for Legacy/Vintage, one additional box for EDH specific cards (cards I consider worthwhile for EDH, but not playable in Legacy), and an additional box for collection items and themed cards (ie, my affinity related cards are all there, because I'm not likely to use them in any other deck). I also have a box where I keep my precon decks (like Elspeth vs. Tezzeret) because I don't tend to loot cards from them so much as use them as measuring sticks against decks I want to test (that isn't to say I don't loot them...my Elspeth deck is currently missing the Elspeth). Cards that are valuable get sleeved so as not to get "box burn." Cards that get used frequently (duals, fetches, Forces, etc) get sleeved in a particular kind of sleeve, so I can just pull them from the box and put them straight in the deck I'm building.

Other than that, it's a matter of finding space where to put them; I have a grocery bag of cards I don't use (most boxed, but some free), and I need to get a few more boxes to put the Innistrad/Dark Ascension (and probably likely the Avacyn Restored) cards that aren't really worth hanging on to.

Somewhere in that mix, I have my basic lands.