On the advice of the internet, I picked up a Plano 5231 storage case for my burgeoning ship collection, and it sorts and fits everything quite well so far (although it admittedly is a little worrying to have the little plastic ships bouncing around against hard plastic, but given they weigh practically nothing and I am unlikely to leave the house with case in hand I doubt it will be a problem). But the one thing that does not fit at all well is the cards.

How do you folks store your cards? The ship cards are pretty easy (currently got them living in an old playing card box that I had lying around), but those half size damage and upgrade cards are giving me fits. Got any suggestions for how to keep damage cards from mixing with upgrades, and containing them both? I might end up doing rubber bands, but ever since a rubber band melted itself onto a pack of cards back in the day (at room temperature, no less) I've been a bit leery of using them with cards whose quality I want to preserve.

I have my damage cards in a Heroclix single booster box. My upgrades I keep in a Heroclix 3 pack team box.

Plano Molding 5232 Double Sided Stow N Go Organizer, Porsche Red, it has two sides…holds all my ships….only had to modify on permanent wall to accomodate two firesprays. message me with your cell number or email, I'll send pics. This forum sucks for posting pics.

http://tuckbox.gameupdates.com

Create a free account so you can login and save your tuckboxes. You plug in the hieght, width and depth of your desired box. You can add text, change colors, and even upload your own images. It will generate a PDF that you can print on cardstock/photo paper, cut out, fold & glue together.

I had a lot of time and decent photoshop skills, so I scanned some cards & artwork to make mine look pretty:

@ziggy2000: Wow, kudos, those turned out really nicely! That's some very nice tipp, thanks!

Aajz_Solari said:

Thanks, glad you like it!

I wanted to add, be sure to print the resulting PDF at "actual size" or the boxes will probably be too small. Cheers!

Nice, the Tuck Box generator looks like just what the doctor ordered. Thanks for the link! Really nice work on yours, as well.

Now all I have to do is find a plastic pocket that fits the game manual to affix to the front of the Plano, and I'll have a lovely little all-in-one carrying case.

Skaak said:

Check at your local post office for the plastic envelope that customs declarations go into for overseas shipment. Postal rules have changed recently and they may not be required anymore, but your PO may still have some. They're not very pretty but they may work fine. Other shipping companies probably have something similar for attaching invoices to the outside of packages.

@Ziggy, any chance you could share your PDF? Your boxes looke really nice! Would give me a starting point for my own, my hpotoshop-fu is not as strong, neither is my access to a nice scanner.

I got an extra Plano case for my Upgrade cards. There are plenty of slots for each type of card. I got some rubber cylinders, cut them in half and epoxied them to the bottom to hold the card stack at an angle so its easier to grab and lift out.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94616636@N03/

For my pilot cards, I got some baseball card 3-ring binder pages. There are nine slots on each page, which is just enough for one page per ship type. The extra named pilot cards go in the extra slots, two each face to face so the emblem is showing on either side. Works great!

Hida77 said:

I haven't had a chance to print these and test them in person yet (no color printer at home that works, and only light-weight cardstock), but here are the tuckboxes that I'm planning to use (based on Ziggy's design, but with the border from the Quick Start instructions instead of the metallic approach Ziggy used):

http://db.tt/3zC91KYF

My scanner is pretty crap, but these look pretty good on screen, at least (hopefully not too blurry once printed; I had to blur them a bit to get rid of annoying artifacts in the scanned image, but I tried not to go too overboard). I'm hopeful that they'll work out nicely as physical boxes.

If the sizing isn't quite right for you, feel free to ping me and I'll send you the PSDs that I generated these images with so you can jumpstart your own customization efforts. Thanks again for pointing out the tuckbox generator, Ziggy! Really awesome resource.

I had a chance to go print my first tuckbox experiments, and they're just a little bit too small; I forgot to add a millimeter or two to accomodate the cards living inside the boxes (so the boxes are pretty much exactly the size of the cards, and the cards don't fit nicely at all). Whoops.

I've killed the link above, since I don't want anyone else to accidentally print slightly-too-small boxes, and will repost once I've modified the dimensions.

Skaak said:

You know, I should have provided the measurements I used for my boxes to prevent this. For an UNSLEEVED Damage deck, the dimensions I used are 41mm wide, 64mm height, 11mm stack depth. When printed actual size, this fits my Damage deck perfectly. Upgrade cards are the same size H & W, with the stack depth increased to 36mm, which is the depth of the Battlefoam tray I store them in. Pilot cards UNSLEEVED fit at 64mm width, 89mm height, and again 36mm stack depth to fit in the tray. If you're sleeving your cards, add 2mm to the width and height, depth will just hold fewer cards. The SLEEVED Damage deck I measured was about 18mm deep, so my estimated size would be 44mm x 66mm x 19mm. Hope this helps!

I originally had no borders with a black background, but found that when the cardstock was folded the edges "cracked" and let the white underneath show. I scanned the artwork from the expansion packs for my borders, and it worked pretty good. Nice idea changing it up with the QS borders, hope it turns out great!

I finally had a chance to print and construct my tuckboxes with improved dimensions, and they work great! Ziggy, I have no idea why they didn't work originally; I used almost the same dimensions as you did. Maybe the cardstock was thicker or I cut outside the lines instead of inside them or something.

Regardless, I can now wholeheartedly recommend these files:

http://db.tt/m1qzgyeA

And here's what they look like:

Looks good!

WOW nice job Ziggy2000

Looks great Ziggy.

I always sleeve everything, with soft sleeves or hard sleeves or both. Upgrade cards, Damage cards, Pilot Cards, Jumbo Promo Pilot Cards.

Personally I have recently moved away from keeping my cards in deck boxes and except for my damage cards have everything in binder pocket pages. It isn't as portable as deck boxes, but I generally only every take only what I'm going to be using with me when I travel to play. I can keep them more organized, find things easier and faster, and it is easier to expand. I was always growing out of my deck boxes.

For Squad building I can now make pages of squads with their upgrades and put that in a pouch to take with me to the LGS.

I use nine-pocket pages in a three ring binder. I use two of the Plano boxes for ships, one Rebel and one Empire. The binder fits in the bag I use to carry the fleet boxes and mat. The only things that do not fit are the second YT-1300 and Firespray.

The R5Don4 Star II said:

Thanks for the comments! At events people always ask me where I got the boxes. I'm going to print up extras and take them with me to give out when somebody asks. I'm working on different sizes and will make them available soon like Skaak did. I also made up some to fit the ship tiles that go on the bases.

I think the binder is a good idea, and I may have to move to a solution more like that, since some of the boxes are getting quite full. With more stuff coming, Wave 3 will probably put it over the limit. For now it looks good and still fits in the Battlefoam tray.

Hair bands. Cloth-covered ones with no metal clips. They hold you firmly but gently, just like Chewie. And they don't rot like elastic bands. Or Chewie.

I used a FedEx resealable "pocket" on the outside of my Plano box, it's the right size for the manual, and it has a reclosable ziplock closure. Maybe you could pick one up from a FedEx shipping store. (mine was from work…)