Collecting How do you sort/seperate your Trainer cards?

Craigyboy88

ポケモン大好き
Member
I'm looking to sort my Trainers into different groups to help when I'm making decks. I don't play often so need some kinda set up that makes it easy to dive back in and quickly find the effects I need. I don't play competitively at all so sorting by Expanded/legal really doesn't appeal to me.

At the moment I'm sorting them into groups like:
- finding Pokémon from deck (Ultra Balls, Bridgette, etc)
- getting cards back from my discard pile (Energy Retrieval, Lusamine)
- hand changes (Sycamore, Shauna)
- healing (PC Lady, Potion)
- opponent attacking (Gust of Wind, Hypnotoxic Laser)
- Tools
- Stadiums, etc

I was just wondering if anyone else has any different ways to sort them cause obviously you can get really pedantic and micro-sort them in to 'discard pile to hand/discard pile to deck' but it just gets a bit out of hand quickly haha. I know I seem neurotic but was just curious how some of you sort your Trainers.
 
I have a binder with pocket pages that I use to keep all my trainers in. I organize them alphabetically by Supporter, Item, Stadium, and Pokeballs. I keep anything older than Black and White organized similarly in another binder. You can fit a good amount of cards into a pocket page. Shiny cards don't go in there, though.
 
I use Elite Trainer Boxes for my cards. I have Items in one box and Supporters and Stadiums in another. I separate the Supporters and Stadiums with a tab, and organize all the cards by alphabetical order.
 
Same as Serperior - I put them in an elite trainer box by alphabetical order. Just had to move to 2 boxes so split by supporters and items. It’s very efficient.
 
Split into categories (Tools, Stadiums, Special Energy, Supporters and regular items), alphabetically in those categories. Tools are seperate mostly down to how many items there are. (And yes, I treat Special Energy the same way I treat Trainers.)

Of course, these days, I mostly plan decks out on PTCGO rather than looking through my physical cards for ideas, so this is by far the most efficient way to find a specific, named card.

Also keep my Standard stuff seperate from everything else.
 
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Take it with a grain of salt as my shift to the PTCGO means I no longer have a physical collection to manage so I barely - if ever - used this approach but:

Collection (for deck building purposes) were stored in the TCG-sized cardboard "long boxes", with sleeves on anything that needed a little extra protection. Everything was in "release order" by expansions, with an exception for all promo (but not mini-set) releases at the end, after the most recent actual expansion. Use something to serve as a divider between sets, between series, and between Formats, like an obvious index card (trimming may be required).

Wait! How does that help someone building decks find Trainers with needed effects?
Well, that is simple:

Use the internet.

Online Pokémon TCG communities, card databases, and search engines (both general and specific to the databases) are even more advanced than when I still had physical cards. This just strikes me as the best balanced between organization - everything has a logical place - and ease of implementation. Including when it is time for set rotation. ;) Alphabetical is still an option, but I prefer the complications from this approach to the complications from an alphabetical organization.

Why not just arrange cards according to function? Too much overlap! It didn't work out well when we had far fewer cards to worry about and what should have been less overlapping mechanics. To give you an idea... where does Apricorn Maker go: with "search" Supporters or with the "Ball" Item cards it actually supports? Somewhere else?

You run out of time to actually build anything, trying to figure out how to sort your cards. XD
 
I use a binder with pocket pages, taking standard-viable from legacy ones, then distinct pages for stadium, balls, tools, etc.
 
I have a large 2 row storage box for my Trainers. I have them sorted by:

-Supporters (in alphabetical order)
-Stadiums
-Spirit Links
-Balls
-Evolution things (items involved with evolution: rare candy, devo spray, evosoda, etc)
-Fossils
-Tools
-Healing items (potions, revives, etc)
-Energy things (items involved with energies: energy retrieval, hammers, etc)
-Etc (every other item that doesn't have a specific category: stretchers, aqua patches, etc)
 
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