Magic collection

I have decided to upload my magic card collection, in preparation of trading/selling anything valuable in it.

First step was ordering all the cards by name. Then I downloaded a full list of cards from the internet - I found full lists for each individual set, but no full list of all cards. The closest I found were the complete price lists, which contain most cards, but not all.

So I downloaded that to disk, opened in Excel, and began adding all cards by count. When known, I also added information about the card set, and the condition if not good.

So why not use pre-packaged software for this? All of the ones I tried were either: non-existent, cost money, required Microsoft Access, or simply killed my computer when I tried to run it. Which is a shame, because my list doesn't include standard information next to each card (like rarity and color), just the name, count, and any notes.

I am looking to trade for Netrunner, Middle Earth CCG, or board games. Always willing to take cash or coupons, of course.

I began collecting in 4th edition - I think that was when the big upsurge happened. My first cards were 4th, Homelands, Chronicles, Ice Age, etc... plus lots of Revised given to me my already established players. I never really spent much money on the game, even though I spent a heck of a lot of time on it.

People complain that Magic is an "expensive" game. I think that is just not true. When people talk about Magic being expensive, they seem to think that playing Magic REQUIRES you to compete in Pro tournaments. Does playing football require you to compete in pro tournaments?

Constructing decks is fun, yes. Buying a few cards to make a deck nicer is fun, yes. But that is only one very small way to play the game. For the last nine years, I have played the game, with my friends and brothers, by drafting from the thousands and thousands of commons and uncommons we have collected for almost nothing. The cards are interesting and often powerful. We have so many different cards that we still surprise each other with cards we haven't seen. When I want something new, I spend $5 and get another 100 cards on eBay; or, I just trade a rare card and get a few hundred commons in its place. Then we draft, construct, rinse, repeat.

Most of my collection is probably not of tremendous interest to the great Magic hoarders. My Ancestral Recall, dual lands, Mana Drain, etc... are all gone. Many of my cards were lost or destroyed. Still, between my brothers and me, we still have lots of good rares, both new and old: Necropotence, Nevineral's Disk, Armageddon, etc...

I will add a link once I get it online.

Yehuda