I’ve been looking for a reliable scanning app with a web portal to manage my magic the gathering collection for a while. All in all most either look terrible or perform terribly over prolonged use. CardCastle is not like the others. The app not only looks great, it performs even better. Fast and smooth and accurate unlike every app I’ve used recently. I have a blank sheet of paper that I have on my desk that I use as my backdrop and CardCastle nails it every time. The best of the rest I’ve tried struggle under the same conditions. The online user interface is even better. The portal allows you to manage your collection and capture pricing, build decks, easy import and export... it’s just hands down the smoothest collection tool I have ever used... in fact it’s one of the smoothest cloud-based software programs I have ever used period! If you want to support the developer, which I highly encourage anyone do if you like the software, the pricing simple and straightforward, no complex set related garage to confuse you. You can do monthly or a whole year at a time. Check out the tool and tryout the online portal, you won’t regret it!

The ease of use of the app cannot be applauded enough, along with the consistency of its platform, me and my nephew will team up and scan through my cards at the same time on two different devices and my collection is always updated accordingly on each which is very impressive, the filtering can use work though, it doesn’t need to be as in depth as say a card kingdom advanced filter but it is pretty lackluster when you compare it to many other products, the deck building is frustrating with the extremely limited filter functionality which has resulted in all of my decks becoming tags, I’ve found it’s easier to scan the cards all in one sitting then tag them with the commander name than to go through and look up every single card after already scanning through them all just to add them to the deck, a feature that allows you to scan in decks would be much appreciated, also I cannot for the life of me figure out what the M’s are for in the filter screen lol

I am especially fond of the ability to scan multiple cards at a time. I wish the set edition was a little more reliable but it is easy enough to edit within the app. Would be nice to set a default so that it forced to the set you were scanning from.Tagging is also wonderful. I can set tags from a scan for a deck then use the tags in the website to setup my deck build. Once this is done however the deck management piece becomes very clunky. Once cards are linked into a deck they cannot be moved around between boards inside the deck which is a critical need when working with cards you may want to bring in or cards to remove as well as the Commander board is needed for the deck to be denoted legal. Removing cards from the deck and re-adding them in the correct board is tedious. At this point transparently I’d use CardCastle to scan my cards in and export them to other better deck management tools.

I’m going to outline pros, cons, and things you should know!Pros:1. Excellent presentation of your collection2. Clean look3. Price point is fair when looking at similar appsThe devs actually care and will type up actual responses! (We all know most apps have a “generic” response)4. You can actually export your collection to show to others5. Your collection can be set to public so others can view it (friends etc)Cons:The pricing seems a tad off when you look at their pricing versus TCG. Example: my Vito (foil) goes for 39 bucks on their app.. it’s really worth like 4 according to TCG. My non foil Vito is worth 19 on their app.. TCG says it’s more like 2.. and yes I double checked to make sure it was labeled with the correct seriesThings to know:This app has devs that are still working on it, so yes it is missing some features, however, what it does have works well (at least for me)I found I had trouble scanning when I was directly over a card. Pull your phone/tablet a bit away and tilt it slightly to the left or right. It scans super quick for me that way with no issues.Finally, I know a lot of people are mad about having to pay for an app, especially a subscription. However, TCG apps require constant updates as more cards are released etc.. it will always need work and updates. With that said, if you look on the website for card castle.. the devs actually give honest answers to many questions explaining why they made decisions for the app (to include why they did a subscription based payment!) they care and are honest.. I promise that’s worth your money. Help them develop and fix things by giving them feedback as you encounter issues or want more features!

Doing a complete inventory of my cards has been a lingering pandemic project. With the money I’ve put into this game over the years, I realized it must amount to a pretty penny at this point. Then, after a buddy’s apartment was hit with a series of leaks and my first question was, “are your cards and you OK?” I figured it was time to actually knuckle down and do this. Then, faced with the prospect of spending even more of my time in front of a computer using Excel, I thought there had to be an easier way to scan things in. Enter CardCastle. Get the lighting in the living room right, throw on a football game and quickly log your cardboard crack between downs. Easy as you like. I’m still in the card entry phase, but cannot wait to see some of the other fancy jazz they’ve built into the system for collection management. What has become abundantly clear (h/t to the API with TCGPlayer’s analytics for card values) is that I am under-insured for this, and need to call my agent posthaste. Folks, we have a lot of memories, to say nothing of money, tied up in our cards. If the worst were to ever happen, the best thing you can do now to quickly rebuild is itemize your collection.

I downloaded and tried virtually every other mtg card scanner and all of them either didn’t work well or limited you to a certain number of scans before paying. This app lets you scan unlimited but only browse the first 1000 cards before paying. And the fee is only $4 a month which isn’t bad compared to competitors. The ability to export my collection is HUGE as well, as I would not have taken the time to scan my cards without knowing I had that flexibility to back them up and use the card collection data elsewhere as well. There are only a few cards out of the hundreds I’ve scanned so far that it doesn’t read properly, despite trying it in different lighting and angles. Otherwise, no complaints!