Dragon Shield MTG Card Manager

The website version of the app as it is loading

Dedicated Magic players soon amass thousands of cards. How do you keep track of your collection? You could manually inventory your cards on spreadsheets, use physical checklists, or leverage one of the many websites or apps out there to do so. This post is about that final option.

There are many solutions to digitally manage your collection, but all feature one and/or two input options:

- searching for/selecting a card

- scanning a card

I have friends who use and speak highly of deckbox.org, which uses the former method. As today's post title may imply, I have been using the Dragon Shield MTG Card Manager, available as both an app and website, which works best for the latter.

Using the Dragon Shield solution is pretty simple. For unlimited scans, you have to use the premium version ($20/year), but it is worth it. Once you have the app on your phone and create your account/etc., you can create folders* and scan cards from your collection** one at a time (hold your phone so that the card's picture is in the box shown on the screen). The app will identify the picture and pull up its information- verify that and make changes as needed (to quantity, foil, version, etc.) to make sure you capture the correct information (as many cards have been reprinted over the years).  Once you know all is correct, press 'save,' then repeat [x] times until you are done with that folder. Then you can create another folder and do the same thing. As many folders for as many cards as you like.

This method may seem cumbersome (it is), but it may be faster than you think- and faster than manually adding cards to your collection. I've scanned as many as 17 cards per minute using this app. 

I should finish scanning my collection today or tomorrow. Here is what I like (and don't) about the Dragon Shield app:

Likes:

• The scanner is impressively correct. I estimate that it identifies the correct artwork over 99.5% of the time. It identifies the correct version most of the time. The latter is difficult to achieve due to the sheer number of reprints (to include things like 'mystery boosters' and 'the list' cards).
• Once you get the process down, you can move faster than manual entry on websites like deckbox.
• You can access your collection on Dragon Shield's website and export it in various formats (to include .csv).
• It gives you a wealth of information about each card, to include market price, details on rulings, and other things. Hence, it goes beyond basic inventory and is a valuable resource for the game in general.
• You can also add information manually (searching for a card and selecting it) if need be.
• The company is very responsive to recommendations/feedback on the app.

Dislikes:

• Making a mistake- clicking 'save' only to realize you got the wrong version/etc.- can really slow you down. It is easy to go back and make edits, but you must exit scanning mode and search for the card in question, then edit its information, then go back to scanning mode. If you are scanning thousands of cards, that can add a lot of time.
• There is no feature to 'bulk' add cards- things like preconstructed decks or common sets of expansions/etc. to your collection. Adding this option could be a huge time saver. Telling the app "add 4 copies of every uncommon card in Throne of Eldraine" or "add all four preconstructed commander decks from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms" would be amazing.
• Adding information manually is possible but cumbersome. This app/website are clearly designed to focus on scanning. And some of the interfaces when manually editing a card are not intuitive.
• You cannot merge folders. It will tell you which folder(s) you have a given card in, but you cannot change it without manually undoing it and re-scanning/etc.
• It does not sum multiple versions of the same card. So if I have (say) 4 Serra Angels from Dominaria and 4 more from Magic 2015, the inventory will show it as such, preserving the distinct versions (and folders they are in). I like that they preserve this information, but wish there was an option to give me the total of a given card across all versions and folders.
• Update: I've done this in Microsoft Excel. See this post for a tutorial.
• You must delete cards from your collection manually (which is cumbersome). That could become a pain if you want to trade or sell a large portion of your collection.
• It does not export to a file version that other collection managers recognize. (This is probably true of all such apps.) This should be simple enough to address with a script, should I develop the time and skills to do that . . . but it would be nice to not have to address this.

Though my 'dislike' list is longer than the 'likes,' I have been very pleased overall. My next post will cover my inventory details.

Rating: A-

*folders can be named anything you want. I recommend naming them based on how you organize your cards; things like "casual cube," "sleeved commander decks," "Innistrad block cards," or the like. Names that will tell you exactly where to find the card when you're looking for it six months from now.

**this hyperlink goes to a tutorial video from the company