r/magicproxies

I love proxxied but the website is driving me nuts trying to make it work currently 🤣

I've done a lot of trouble shooting and I've finally figured out all the right settings and products to use to get the PERFECT proxy. They look slightly better than Magic cards (at least mine do but I use a nice printer) and the feel just like real cards, not to thin and not too thick.

A couple things first

- This is designed to be used as double sleeved cards

- I have done a lot of trouble shooting with paper and card stock size to get the individual cards to feel very close to the real thing. Still each card is a not exact to a real magic card, and when you print a 100 card commander deck, the whole thing comes up just large enough where you might struggle to get it into your average commander deck box.

- Because of that, I highly recommend that that at least 30 of your cards in a commander deck are normal magic cards, that balances out the increase in thickness. Also, I figure that each card is about 35-45 cents to print, not counting the time and labor. Therefore, for me, it makes sense to still buy cards are that under 1 dollar.

Here are the things you need

1. Obviously a Printer. I have a Canon Pixma Pro 200, but I bought this for photography printing first. I can't really suggest a lesser printer because I don't know how quality will change.

2. A paper cutter. DO NOT use the sliding type, where the blade slides over the paper. Instead use the type that has the arm that slices down. This will allow you to make extremely fine, precision cuts that you will need to do at times. Here is what I recommend, but you can use any kind of this style of cutter.

Amazon.com : Dahle 15e Vantage Paper Trimmer, 15" Cut Length, 15 Sheet, Automatic Clamp, Adjustable Guide, Metal Base with 1/2" Gridlines, Guillotine Paper Cutter : Rotary Paper Trimmers : Office Products

2. A Corner cutter. This is the one that works routinely. Use will use the SMALL setting to get the corner cut you need. Corner cuts are important for the aesthetics of the card but it also will help in making fine cuts later.

Amazon.com: New Sunstar Kadomaru Pro, Corner Cutter (S4765036) (Kadomaru Pro) with Authentic Hologram US, UK, EU Only : Tools & Home Improvement

3. Paper. Use the sticker glossy style paper. This is the kind I use

Amazon.com : Koala Printable Glossy Sticker Paper for Inkjet Printer, White, 8.5x11 Inch Self-Adhesive Photo Sticker Printer Paper, (120 Sheets) : Office Products

4. Card Stock; 92Lb is what I use. Maybe a smaller pound would work better, but the cards feel right in the hand with this, so I stuck with this

Amazon.com: 30 Sheets Black Cardstock, 8.5 x 11 Card Stock, 92lb/250gsm Thick Cover Stock, Heavyweight Printer Paper for Invitations, Scrapbooking, Crafting, DIY Projects, Decoration and Drawing

5. DragonSleeve Perfect fit card sleeves

PREPARING THE PAPER.

- It works better if you prepare you paper BEFORE you print. To do so, you will need to stick the card stock to the paper. The best way to do this is to peel a small, 1 inch corner of your sticker paper and fold it down into a triangle. Then align it with your card stock and while squeezing them together, smooth down your stick paper onto the card stock. Now just slowly peel away the sticker sheet beneath. After you get the first 4-6 inches down, you're in the clear and the rest of the paper will align properly. Don't worry if there is a little bleed over on the edges. You will have some wiggle room.

MAKING THE PROXIES

- I like Proxxied.com. The site has everything I need right there and is so easy to use. This youtube video runs through it very well:

https://youtu.be/KR-NCflTU-0?si=BBNEGuZ_DUfttOuf

1. On the left, under preferred art source, choose MPC

2. Below enter your cards one at a time

3. Click on each card and you can adjust the artwork, then duplicate if you need to

4. On the right, under settings, select Letter 8.5 x 11 to match our paper size

5. For bleed, I use 0.5

6. In advanced car positioning: set card spacing to Horizonal 2 Vertical 2. This is important, it allows us a vastly better margin to precisely cut our cards. Just below that, change Vertical offset to -1 or -2. This gives us some room at the bottom of our cards.

7. Under guides, this is important, change the card cut guides to wrap around the WHOLE card. This will make it easy to get a perfect fit for our card in our Dragon sleeve Perfect fit.

8. Now, down at the bottom, export at 900 DPI

9. I suggest using adobe acrobat reader. Open our PDF and select Print; Change Custom Scaling to 99% (This slightly shrinks our card to compensate for the increased thickness, and helps it fit correctly into the Perfect Fit Sleeve.

10. Also, click properties and change print quality to standard. Don't use high, it just uses too much ink and the cards don't look any different.

CUTTING THE CARDS

1. It is good practice to let your ink cure for at least 30 minutes before you cut.

2. Do a rough cut for all your cards on the sheet, leaving plenty of white space.

3. Now, when you actually go to cut, your goal is to cut EXACTLY along the green line, try not to go ANY further into the card than the green line. It is better to have a hint of green on your card that you can shave off rather than have a card that is now too small for the sleeve (it's easy to mess up than you think). The trick is to line up the left side of the card where the green line JUST passes the edge of the cutting surface, then gently lower the rubber grip of the cutting blade down so you can still move the card. Now adjust the card so that the right side also lines just past the edge.

4. Give firm, swift cuts, with some gentle pressure of the blade against the edge of the cutting platform. After a sheet, clean off the residual glue off the blade to make cutting easier.

5. Now cut your corners on SMALL

6. Now, you will try to slide your card into the PERFECT FIT Dragon sleeve. It should fit in snug but not tight. A good rule of thumb is that if the card bows into the sleeve, you will pull it out and make a VERY small precision cut along one edge. Look at your card, try to assess which side looks a little off and make the cut on that corner. When you do so, take the corner of that edge JUST past the edge of the blade, only just enough that the blade is able to cut. You will be amazed how the smallest amount of too much here can throw off the whole card. Recut your corner after you make a precision cut. Remember: just one tiny cut along a lopsided edge can make a card that's too tight to fit in the perfect sleeve fit perfectly

(This is why we scale our cards down to 99%. At 100%, the cards are ever so slightly too large where I found that EVERY card needed extra cutting to fit. At 99% they are just the right size to where if you cut exactly at the line, they should fit and if they are still too tight, the slightest of cut on one corner should do the trick.)

And that should be it! You can now put the card into your main sleeve and you're done. It will look amazing and feel just like a real card, costing about 35 cents. It takes a lot of practice, but this guide should get you there

Does anyone print proxies with the intent on not sleeving them and just riffle shuffling like a normal desk of cards?

I was able to get good results with double sided printing so the card backs being misaligned isn’t a worry. I currently am using koala double sided glossy 160gsm and laminating with 3mil glossy laminate. Cards look fantastic and have a decent feel/snap but I had a thought, I could use thicker photo paper like Koalas 250gsm double sided glossy, still laminate with 3mil and then just not sleeve them.

Goal is to have the cards be more sturdy and snappy outside of sleeves. Obviously the 250gsm with 3mil laminate would be thicker than normal cards so if I sleeve them, the stack would be too big. But if I don’t sleeve them, the thickness shouldn’t matter much.

ET8550 ~600-700$ USD
ET2803 ~180-200$ USD

From a "quality of the results" perspective, they have the same resolution: 5760 x 1440, but the ET8550 has 48bit color depth compared to the ET2803's 24bit color depth, and ET8550 uses 2 extra ink types to achieve that outcome.

The ET8550 can do larger paper sizes of 13x19inch compared to the 8.5x14inch of the ET2803, but most of the papers used in this hobby tend to be ANSI A or A4 sheets which they both can handle just fine.

They can both, presumably, handle printing foils (https://www.reddit.com/r/magicproxies/comments/1t8bld4/my\_2\_month\_proxy\_journey/) so I have to ask: What is the ET8550 bringing to the table that makes it the gold standard when it's 3 times the price of a printer that can the same things?

As far as I can tell, you'd either need to want the color depth and be willing to pay ~400$+ for it, or you'd need to plan to print huuuuge stuff, but that isn't really pertinent for this hobby. I'm just confused as to how the community decided that the ET8550 or ET8500 were the go to printers? Maybe I'm missing something?

I need some advice on what to look for in a printer, I've been led to believe that Laser is the way to go as inkjet has more issues.

Can I get anything half decent without spending $400 in Australia?