What Products would you like to see made?

Everything else.

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Does everything you have for your MtG products suit your requirements?

Yes
2
22%
Yes, I make do with what I can find, close enough is good enough
0
No votes
Yes, the current storage/display products have enough variety to do everything I need.
0
No votes
No, I would like to see some new products specifically for MtG rather than having to make do with what is currently available
4
44%
No, but I make do with what is available, better than nothing
2
22%
No
1
11%
 
Total votes: 9

GlobalBoosterHunter
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What Products would you like to see made?

Post by GlobalBoosterHunter » Wed Oct 15, 2014 2:54 am

Having just read the thread on the four row binder
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/forum/v ... highlight=
it got me to thinking...

There are many problems I have with my MtG collection and I keep waiting for someone to make a product to fix the problems, in the meantime I work around the problems, often buying items that are not suitable for the task but they are the best I can find.

For example. I collect sealed boxes, not many but I have a few and I want to keep them in top condition, if they arrived from eBay with damaged corners and ripped outer wrappers I would not be happy. But despite all the efforts the eBay sellers go to wrap them securely for the post, it is all to no avail if I then stack them up in a cupboard and they get damaged.

At the moment I go out and buy plastic boxes with lids. I put the sealed booster box inside and close the lid. This is my solution for the moment.

But it is not ideal, the box is larger in all three dimensions than I need, this is because they don't make boxes which exactly fit booster boxes. So I am wasting space in my limited area.

The boxes are not designed to be archival, I have no idea what they are made of, they might be full of PVC softeners, slowly degrading and filling the box with chlorine which will mix with the moisture in the atmosphere to make acids which can damage the cardboard or fade the inks.

The lids are not designed to be airtight, and in the subtropical climate I live in it is always humid, seal that inside a box with all the spare airspace inside and store it in a cupboard which gets no ventilation and you are asking for trouble down the line. So you have to add the moisture packets to the box and "seal" them on a dry day with the air-conditioner running

The boxes are opaque and you can't see through them. Half the fun of having a collection is being able to enjoy it and display it.

They stack pretty high but the lids are not strong, I have had a couple of failures in the past where the lid has collapsed under the weight of the boxes on top.

In an ideal world I would be able to go to a shop and buy one of these
Image
Which would be the exact size to fit a Magic Booster Box.

We already know the benefits, but I am going to list them anyway :)

An exact fit, no wasted space.
An exact fit, the box can't move around inside and bash about.
An exact fit, no space for moisture laden air
An exact fit, a tight seal around the box so minimal air leakage
Crystal clear, you can see all sides, top and bottom
Crystal clear, no need to label the boxes as you can see the contents and if you are looking for one in particular you don't have to open loads of boxes to find them.
Strong, you can stack them high
Archival quality, acrylic is inert so no storage issues (does go cloudy in UV)
Looks sweet!

A while back I contacted Ultra Pro and another company which seemed to make their own products, they already make these different sized boxes for baseballs and other sporting equipment, or toy cars and I asked if they would make some for booster boxes. Needless to say they never got back to me, and maybe they do make them and I just haven't found them yet.

But there are many other things I am doing which are not ideal and could really be done better.

For instance;

Storing boosters, also in boxes, exactly the same problems, with the addition of the flaps getting bent over and creased.

Storing my individual Starter/tournament packs, I have wrapped them in cellophane to protect the outer wrappers and put them in a box.

Cards, when I turn the album upside down or I store them lying down, or even turn the pages too quickly the cards can fly out or worse, fly half out and get creased. A page that allows them to be easily taken in and out but stops them accidently flying out would be important.

Do they have album pages for graded/slabbed cards? I know they have album pages for coins in slabs or capsules and the coin companies are now cranking out new product to meet the new market, capsules for beer bottle top collectors etc.

Displaying my boosters in albums, currently the pockets are very tight and you can't double sleeve the boosters very well before putting them into the pockets. And you can only get 6 to a page, I would need about 11 to a page in order to display all the languages for the modern sets, 13 if they have the 6 packs. At the moment I am trying to have one solution to fit all the different sets, but when you have Japanese boosters and some with 3 pictures and some with 5 variations then maybe one size doesn't fit all and a more customised approach is needed.

We are no longer constrained having to wait for a company to decide that our niche is large enough to exploit.

The customer and collector has the best idea of what they are looking for, they have an idea of the features they would like added, the more variety of input the better suited the product is.

Finding the funding to get the project off the ground can be organised by crowd funding platforms which also help to gauge the public's interest in the product which can also help to drive initial sales, online stores can drive later sales and enough people have connections with local game stores that they can put them on the shelf.

The internet can put you in touch with manufacturers around the world, if you want something 'proudly' made in your country you can, if you want something cheap you can. If you happen to live in a country that makes cheap products you can have both, but that counts me out.

Is there any demand for such obscure, niche products?

I looked at having some specific booster storage/mailer clam-shells made. The price was not that expensive, it wasn't cheap but I could have afforded it but without the ability to sell extra units I would have worn the set up and production costs myself. If I could have sold some then everyone would take a share in the cost of the initial tooling and I would probably have gone ahead with a limited run just to satisfy everyone's immediate needs, no need to make a profit but if it had helped me get what I needed slightly cheaper then I would count that as a win.

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CHaPuZaS
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Post by CHaPuZaS » Wed Oct 15, 2014 10:58 am

Well, I will be buying the Booster Box clear boxes, and also whatever exists to seal boosters, so here's hoping. In any case, the problem is that WotC creates too many different sized products. You can get produce some of the most standarized, like Booster Boxes and Booster Packs, but what happens with the boosters in Japanese Language? What about the different Intro Packs, Event Decks, Commander decks, and so on?

Maybe they have come to this point and decided that as they weren't going to fit everything, it was not worth to begin with. Though I'd love it.

GlobalBoosterHunter
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Post by GlobalBoosterHunter » Wed Oct 15, 2014 11:50 am

The variety of shapes and sizes is a bit of a problem.

This is a problem that has mostly been solved by the coin collectors. Coins come in all sizes so they make a larger container and use different sized inserts

Image

Image

The same could be done with boosters, you make the containers big enough to hold the Japanese boosters and add inserts for all the others.

This means that at least they all look the same which means you can store them in a standard sized container.

Unsurprisingly Aliexpress have several companies who manufacture plastic slabs http://www.aliexpress.com/promotion/pro ... otion.html

I have tried a few of the coin products, they work ok but you can't get them out again without breaking the holder.

These holders have a space for information, you could make it as big as you wanted to include as much relevant info as you wanted. I would go with language, expansion symbol, set title, cycle title, bar code info and country of manufacture, plus any other info on the variety.


Aliexpress actually already has quite a few similar items, if they can manufacture them in one size they can make them in any size http://www.aliexpress.com/item-img/New- ... 17670.html

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mystical_tutor
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Post by mystical_tutor » Tue Oct 21, 2014 5:53 pm

In general I make do because i don't believe it would be practical for any company to meet my needs while so few others would want the same thing I want.

Gary
Gary Adkison
Father of a former Wizards of the Coast janitor.

Knowledge is proud because it thinks it knows so much; wisdom is humble because it realizes it knows so little.

GlobalBoosterHunter
Legendary Aussie Booster Hunter
Posts: 1299
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2012 3:38 am
Location: Queensland, Australia

Post by GlobalBoosterHunter » Wed Oct 22, 2014 5:44 am

mystical_tutor wrote:In general I make do because i don't believe it would be practical for any company to meet my needs while so few others would want the same thing I want.

Gary
I think you are right, a company won't make anything in such small numbers, it isn't financially viable to set up a factory for such a small run of product.

I don't think we are quite there yet but with the advent of 3D printing, Instructables, Makers, and other interested parties there is an avenue to make small numbers of items without the financial incentive.

Most hobbies end up costing you money, I have never made any money out of my hobbies as I don't run them as a business. But I do like to do my hobbies well and when you can pop down to a hardware store and spend a couple of bucks playing around with a few ideas, it doesn't matter if you will never get rich making them, the incentive isn't money, it is getting the most out of your hobby.

It isn't local but there is a shed close enough which has laser cutters and 3D printers and a bunch of people who are experimenting.

The latest laser-cut acrylic boxes are self assembly and come flat packed. This innovation alone will cut down on the cost of production and the cost of postage.

Now I just need to measure a few of the boxes and come up with a couple of prototypes :)

GlobalBoosterHunter
Legendary Aussie Booster Hunter
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Location: Queensland, Australia

Post by GlobalBoosterHunter » Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:14 am

Not sure if this is any use to any deck collectors... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cr ... ref=newest ...but it shows that you don't have to wait for a big company to start producing specialist items for niche markets.

They look pretty decent, but probably a bit tight for tournaments or starters.

You could always ask him to make them bigger.

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Alifromcairo
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Post by Alifromcairo » Sat Oct 25, 2014 11:32 am

Thank you for the link GBH, this is a very interesting project IMHO.
I can imagine my cards turning on themselves on this very well designed stuff !
Visit the Shores of Imagination

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