Sunk cost cube, part 1: the gathering

When it comes to building a Magic Cube on a budget, the discussion revolves around peasant and pauper cubes. But if you’ve been hoarding Magic cards, then you can put them to good use with a sunk cost cube. It’s a long journey, but here’s where to start.

First, you’ll have to catalogue all those cards. Decked Builder costs $3.99 + $4.99 for the “Card Cam Add-On”, which feels pricey, but is worth every penny. Without a sorting machine(!) it was the easiest way to digitize my collection of Magic cards, because their algorithm does a quick image comparison of the entire card. The alternatives rely on OCRing the name of the card, which needs careful alignment and can be error-prone. Out of 2000+ cards, only a few gave Decked Builder problems.

The one knock against Decked Builder is that you have to tap the screen for each card you want to scan. Where as CardSplice can scan cards automatically with a timed interval. I must have built the stands incorrectly, because I couldn’t get it working this smoothly. Besides, the oldest set it supports is M11 and I have hundreds of cards going back further than that.

The little bit of secret sauce to make the process go smoother is the GripTight GorillaPod Stand. It frees up your hands to pass cards from one to the other and because the cards and phone stay in the same place relative to each other, the phone doesn’t have to refocus between shots.

Once you’ve scanned everything and know what you have to work with, the next step is card evaluation.