Whether you are collecting cards for gaming, as sports memorabilia, or to commemorate key shared universes and participate in their fandoms, digitizing that collection has become the next big thing in collectible management. Card collections are uniquely suited to digitization, which allows you to organize and manage the collection with ease. It also provides you with options for viewing the art and consulting the card’s text that do not involve putting wear and tear on a valued collectible. So, how do you make the most of a new sports card scanner? It’s easier than you think.
Cataloging With Scanners
Today’s scanners, like the new 8000 series models from Fujitsu, use more sophisticated image interpretation software than ever before. When you consider how important image and text recognition can be to cataloguing large numbers of scans, it becomes easier to see why this is so important for collectors. Today’s scanners also produce higher-fidelity images than ever before, so they can capture the full detail and color depth of your favorite cards.
The result? You can build a digital catalog that allows you to peruse and manage your cards from your computer. That saves a lot of time and energy when you compare it to the effort you have to spend to take boxes and boxes of cards out of storage to go searching for a particular item. When you catalog cards with a scanner, you also make it easier to know exactly where you put them, because you can tag the scans with box and row numbers to narrow down your search when you do need to pull a particular item out of storage.
Trading Card Management
In addition to viewing your cards and cataloguing their storage locations, you can also use a photo scanner to manage the sale of cards and tracking of duplicate entries in your collection. That helps you decide when it is time to free up some space in addition to tracking when you have completed a series. Instead of having to scan or photograph the card information individually whenever you want to list one for sale, you can pull information from your card catalog. It also helps you with new acquisitions, because if you do get duplicates, you can just update the number in stock or immediately list the new card for sale using the information you have already digitized.
Card collectors who specialize in trading card games can also use high quality scanners to create digital collections that can be used to play online in the right setting. That makes it easier to use your entire collection when playing over video chat, without having to actually dig out the entire deck each time.
Track Everything in One Place
Digital tracking is not a new concept for card collectors, but today’s options for digitizing the information from your collection are more efficient than ever. Whether you are upgrading from an older generation scanner that still required manual metadata input or starting fresh and learning digitization from scratch, you’ll find it is very easy with today’s high quality home scanners.
