Discussion Forum

Custom deck boxes

Not having my decks organized bothers me, and I refuse to spend $7 on a deck box...so I made my own. I put images of creatures from my deck on the largest faces and printed the deck title on it, along with corresponding mana symbols. The quality is fairly similar to the duel deck boxes, and they are actually made out of folders. Sturdy enough and still easily shaped.

Now my friends are jealous and asking me to make them. I've already made 5, and the process is becoming rather easy.

Now, my question to the community: would people be interested in buying custom deck boxes, or is it a stupid plan? I know I would have to work out legal issues with wizards because I'm using their creatures, but I thought this would be an interesting thing to make available to everyone. Customers could go to a website, place the pictures where they want in the template, and I would make the box for them for $2-$3 and then mail it the next day. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. :)

Posted 19 June 2012 at 04:01

14 replies

Myself and my group of friends have been ordering custom card sleeves from a graphic design artist who's a buddy with our shop's owner for years. The idea of asking for custom boxes never really came up, and now that you mention it, I'm not sure why.

Just like custom card sleeves, it's a surprisingly open market, and I think once someone gets their hold on it, they're going to make a fortune :D

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Posted 19 June 2012 at 05:35

Sounds good, do you have any pictures of the ones you've made already?

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Posted 19 June 2012 at 07:51

Thank both of you so much for the support. As soon as I get back to my pc (I'm on mobile now) I'll upload some photos. For now the best I can say is they're slightly bigger than the duel deck boxes and can hold at least 75 cards (deck+sideboard) and have enough room for 60 sleeved cards.

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Posted 19 June 2012 at 11:49

I hope these upload right... I positioned them so you could see all of the dimensions pretty well. Also, new boxes will be less beat up. I have been using these for a few weeks now and they've been dropped and squeezed in backpacks, causing a few bent corners

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Posted 19 June 2012 at 21:35

Hey, these are pretty cool, I can these being useful to people on a budget if they're around $2-$3 like you said! Are you planning on doing different sizes? For example it might be good if you could make ones that could hold a sleeved deck or an EDH deck maybe...

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Posted 20 June 2012 at 00:12

They can already hold a sleeved deck of 60 cards, but it's a bit tight. I was thinking of making them 1/2 inch thicker for that. As far as EDH goes, an expanded box should be able to hold 100 unsleeved cards. I'm not sure how much bigger I can go (I have to keep the sheet 8.5" x 11") but I'll definitely try to make them a bit bigger. How difficult do you think it would be to get Wizards' permission to sell them?

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Posted 20 June 2012 at 00:23

Not trying to hijack your thread here, but i thought you could appreciate the creativeness of this kid who plays friday night magic with my group occassionally. He makes his own deck boxes out of lego's. Big enough to hold a 75 card deck (60 main deck, 15 sideboard), and color coordinates the boxes he makes to the color of the deck he is playing. I thought it was pretty cool.

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Posted 20 June 2012 at 01:29

As a fan of legos almost as much as magic, I can definitely appreciate his creativeness, that's an awesome idea! I might have to try my hand at making one of those too, thank you :)

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Posted 20 June 2012 at 01:35

Wow. Those boxes look great. I would love to have some. How much do you charge to make a custom box?
Like SureWhyNot said, above, I think that you could make a killing with these, seeing as how there isn't really anyone else doing it. good quality boxes, for cheap. awesome. :)

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Posted 20 June 2012 at 15:35

I'm going to try and get permission from Wizards to sell them for $3. I'll be using their images and I don't want a lawsuit on my hands. But if I do get permission, you can just pm me two cards that you want images of, the colors of your deck, and the title of your deck (or any other words you want put on the top). I'll also have to ask for shipping info, but hopefully I can get a formal website put up so it doesn't look so shady, lol. Or maybe I could work something out with my local card shop to put on their website... They only take about an hour or 45 min to make, so I should be able to ship next day. :) I'll post any updates on availability to this thread. But for now, I dont have permission and I'm out of raw materials. Lol.

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Posted 20 June 2012 at 17:57

I think you'll have problems getting permission to use the artwork to be honest... Have you considered using custom artwork or approaching artists to work with you on some custom designs for your products?

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Posted 22 June 2012 at 08:05

I have considered that, but 1) I'm not the best artist. 2) They would take much longer to make and I would have to charge more per box. 3) I'm only 16 and I doubt I'd be taken seriously by a professional artist...

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Posted 22 June 2012 at 13:24

ya well that's kinda why commercial boxes are ~7$ ..because they have to pay for licensing and/or artists.

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Posted 22 June 2012 at 14:38

If it takes you 45min to an hour to make one, then I'm assuming you're definately not in this for the money. Even if Wizards gives you permission to sell them, you're making less than half of minimum wage doing so.

The only really feasable way to make $$ at something like this is to figure a way to mass produce them. Setting them up as a sheet-printable item that can simply be folded origami-style into the shape of the card box once they're printed off in a sheet would be the way to go. Then you could just have your local print shop (like kinkos or something) run them off in large batches instead of one at a time. Ship to customer with instructions on how to properly fold them into the box shape. Will save on shipping costs of abnormally shaped boxes this way too, as well as allowing you to create hundreds in a short time rather than 1 an hour.

Again, this is assuming you get permission. Just my 2 cents. :)

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Posted 01 July 2012 at 11:57