Why?
Why does this tool exist?
Other tools are too slow
When trying other tools, I couldn’t get past how slow most of them are to enter card data. I have thousands of cards and a desire to know what and where each one of them is, slow time for entry was a deal-breaker for me.
Because I can
I’ve been a full-stack web developer for 10 years with a Bachelors in Computer Science, so I had the ability to custom make a tool that suited my needs. This tool uses the latest tools and frameworks to ensure Card Inventory is fast.
Background
Originally I had tried sorting my cards by the set they were from and keeping them neat(ish) in one of these 5000 card storage boxes but over time as I bought more cards my sorted collection would eventually unravel. Adding insult to injury, I had no idea what was in each section, I only knew what the set should be because that’s how I sorted them.
Enter Chaotic Storage, famously used by Amazon and regarded as one of the most efficient storage and retrieval systems on the planet.
The idea is that you don’t apply any logical sorting to items, but instead only track where each card is. When you want to retieve an item, your system will tell you exactly where to find it. Please note: you don’t need to use Card Inventory to take advantage of Chaotic Storage, you can use this with any tool that lets you name or tag collections of cards. The advantage to using Card Inventory though is because it knows exactly what cards you have, it can give you an up-to-date daily price of each card and each collection.
My storage box is divided into 5 x 7 grid, columns “A”, “B”, “C”, “D”, “E” and rows 1-7. Each grid “collection” holds 200 cards, you label these collections as “A1”, “A2”, “A3” and so on. When you enter cards into Card Inventory, you don’t care about sorting your cards by set, cmc, colour etc. because once entered, you know exactly where it is. When retrieving a card from one of these columns, you only have to sift through 200 cards.
The layout looks roughly like this:
| A7 | B7 | C7 | D7 | E7 |
| A6 | B6 | C6 | D6 | E6 |
| A5 | B5 | C5 | D5 | E5 |
| A4 | B4 | C4 | D4 | E4 |
| A3 | B3 | C3 | D3 | E3 |
| A2 | B2 | C2 | D2 | E2 |
| A1 | B1 | C1 | D1 | E1 |
Card Inventory will tell you exactly in what collection any particular card can be found, and searching your collection is fast.