Storage solution: how do you hold the upgrade and pilot cards?

By GeneticDrift, in X-Wing

I am interested in getting binders to hold my cards, but i am worried i will get the wrong sizes or grab a sub par solution. How do you do it?

I have sleeved the upgrade cards and could probably sleeve the pilots if needed.

I use these pages from Ultrapro. The link takes you to the bulk box of 100. I don't know where you can order the individual pages. I buy mine at my local store.

I just use the various bags that come in all these different ship boxes.

Standard baseball card pages for the pilot cards (9 to a page).

For the upgrades, Ultimate Guard now has a binder with slots sized for the X-Wing upgrade cards.

I use the Ultra Pro 4 page binder for upgrade cards and deck boxes from the tournament kits for the pilots.

I use deck boxes for pilots and a Broken Token box for the upgrade cards. I foolishly bought one of the mini american binders and HATE HATE HATE it. Gets hard to organize as you get more upgrades and takes too long to get the cards in/out.

Boxes work better for me. I will say if you like binders the mini american binders are made well and really my complaint is about binders themselves.

For upgrade cards, I use "5-Star" zipper binders with rigid 2 inch coin pages. Snug and protected, easy to sort. The pages are designed to hold 20 coins but with upgrade cards the top row is unusable. But each page can still hold 48 sleeved cards if you insert 3 per slot. 93 cents with tax at my local coin shop.

I use standard card pages for pilot cards.

Edited by dewbie420

OK, I've been looking at options too, and so far I'm not sold on a binder. It just seems too much hassle to get the cards in and out and re-organise when I want to expand.

For those using deck boxes, how have you found them in use?

I'm leaning towards protectors and boxes so the cards don't have to be taken out of binder pages, meaning they'll always remain protected, and there's no rearrangement required.

Does anyone have any good box suggestions for the small upgrade cards?

Edited by Arttemis

Ultra pro 9-card binder pages for pilots, ultra pro 16 card binder pages for upgrades.

sleeves and my minicabs for me as it has slots for my cards.

My upgrade cards are also sleeved however they go in a plastic front from an xwing blister before going in the case, as that stops them sliding around.

I am really ocd and all my cards are sorted by type then points, then alphabetically binders would need reorganisation every time I got a new card!

Edited by Vixen Icaza

sleeves and my minicabs for me as it has slots for my cards.

My upgrade cards are also sleeved however they go in a plastic front from an xwing blister before going in the case, as that stops them sliding around.

I am really ocd and all my cards are sorted by type then points, then alphabetically binders would need reorganisation every time I got a new card!

That's why you leave spaces for the stuff you don't have yet ;)

The only sets that are long enough to leak over onto more than one page are EPTs, mods, and crew. There really aren't THAT many in each category of upgrade, so giving each its own binder page works fine.

I keep my pilot and upgrade cards in folders. The pilot cards are the standard 9 pocket pages, but I managed to find some more suitable pages for the upgrade cards on eBay a while back. I believe they're for old cigarette cards.
Basically, they get organised like so:

Pilot cards

  • Faction -> Ship -> Pilot Skill

Upgrade Cards

  • Upgrade Type -> Point Value
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I was going to buy one of these for the upgrade cards http://www.thebrokentoken.com/mini-american-card-case/

But international shipping would have been ridiculous. So I made a couple of boxes out of the cardboard that comes with large ships/aces boxes :D (and some sellotape, glue, and wrapping paper to make it look nice)

I just put the pilots in a ziplock bag.

all in zip loc bags for me split by type for upgrade cards and factions for Pilots. will split the pilots up further soon though and drop it to ship level for them.

For those using deck boxes, how have you found them in use?

Some people I know use them, and they have to sort through the whole pile of cards to find the ones they want. Much faster and easier with the pocket pages.

Taking them out and putting them away is faster and easier than sorting through a pile, but reorganizing can be a pain. But I queue up something on netflix when I'm going to do that.

all in zip loc bags for me split by type for upgrade cards and factions for Pilots. will split the pilots up further soon though and drop it to ship level for them.

I used to do the zip-loc bagie thing too but after wave 4 or so, I just had far too many cards to organize like that.

I have mine in two separate binders, one for the pilots and one for the upgrades.

I leave plenty of room for new waves.

I just have one of each pilot/upgrade in the binders that I mostly just use as reference for building a list. The rest are in deck boxes.

I got a bunch of side loading deck boxes that work great for storing the mini cards, pilots just go in normal deck boxes, one per faction

I was going to buy one of these for the upgrade cards http://www.thebrokentoken.com/mini-american-card-case/

But international shipping would have been ridiculous.

That is quite nice, I shall have a proper look when I get on my computer later.

International shipping could be a problem but my OCD really like the look of that storage option.....hmmm

I sleeve everything. I keep the pilots in a cardboard card box that cost about $1 at the card shop. The extra space is used for small boxes that hold asteroid tokens.

I organize the upgrades by category and keep the groups inside penny sleeves; I fold the top over and hold it with a piece of tape. These are held standing up in 1/2 an iphone box.

At the moment I store my pilot cards in a binder and upgrade cards in a separate binder. It works ok for the pilot cards but I don't like it for the upgrade cards. I'm going to switch to using a box. It is too much faffing around to take them in and out of the binder and when new cards are released, it can involve a significant amount of re-ordering if you use any sort of sensible system for organising them (I organise by upgrade slot then alphabetically).