The case was absolutely fantastic for my needs at the time, storing a thousand cards in each row, more than enough for my questions and answers. But as time went on, and unauthorised 3rd party expansions such as Crabs Adjust Humidity, Cords against Harmony and Cards and Punishment came to my attention, not to mention my own custom cards, I ended up with just shy of 2000 answer cards alone, forcing my question cards to be stored in the CAH game box. My card games travel with me a lot, and as such the box has taken a battering. "No problem!" I thought. That wasn't the only size available, the cases go as low as a 250 capacity and as high as a 3000. But when I checked Amazon again, most sizes were gone and the few that were left, all 250 to 1000, were of very short supply.
Also, on top of this, I had received a copy of Munchkin as a birthday present, and as I am a huge fan of crossover fiction, a massive collector fanboy, and like to maximise the size of my games to avoid repetition and increase replay value (See: nearly 3000 CAH cards), I quickly learnt that Munchkin's total card count across all of their themed sets is somewhere between 5,500 and 6000 cards.
But one day, while searching my home town for an automatic card shuffler, I stumbled across a set of three nesting flight cases in Maplin, for around £40 (which may sound a lot, but the card case alone set us back around £30).
The insides of the cases feature foam-lined walls with grooves in them, and include hardboard slats coated in a similar foam that slide into the grooves to form compartments. Also, the lid in each case has a sturdy pocket for storing what they call 'paperwork', but for me, instructions. The smallest of the cases was ideal in size and allowed spacing of the slats to house my current, fledgling Munchkin collection, as shown here:
But, having learned from the past, I knew that won't always be enough, so on to the largest box in the set. Now, by some miracle of spacing, each Munchkin card standing in portrait takes up four of the spaces allowed by the grooves, and there are a total of 28 going across the front and back walls of the case, allowing EXACTLY seven columns in total. The only slats provided for this case though, were one front-to-back slat to go dead in the centre and two smaller slats that stretched from the side walls to the centre slat. I needed six front-to-back slats.
Unfortunately, the foam around the slats changed their overall thickness from 3mm to around 9mm, and that would prevent the cards from sitting in the column either side of it, so I stripped the foam from the front-to-back slat, and cast aside the two smaller ones. I'd found and purchased a sheet of 3mm thick hardboard from my local B&Q, so I drew around the exposed slat onto the board five times.
Here's where things went a little awry. I originally tried using a coping saw to cut the pieces out, but the constant snagging of the blade on the board was driving me mad and taking forever. So I tried a jigsaw, but the board was far too pliable and the saw caused the board to wobble around like mad as I was cutting it. If you're a real handyman, unlike myself, you'll probably have a workbench with a gap down the middle for sawing and some clamps to hold it in place, but when all you have is a camping table and a rapidly diminishing can-do attitude, it's just not meant to be. So I ended up scoring the board with a sharp knife and snapping the pieces off by hand.
Not the tidiest of work, but trust me, it doesn't matter in the long run. I decided that the messiness and hard, coarse surfaces of the board called for some extra padding, so I ordered a few sheets of sticky-back felt from a seller on Amazon. By yet another sizing miracle, the boards were just under 3 inches wide and about 12.5 inches long, and the felt was sold in 12"x12" sheets. So I foolishly ordered three sheets leaving NO ROOM FOR ERROR.
I cut each sheet in half, then tightly folded them in half again along the longest side, to leave a crease. Then, after removing the backing paper (be warned, the felt is a hell of a lot stickier than I anticipated), placed the edge of a slat into the crease, before folding up either side and sticking it to the front and back of the slat. Narrowly avoiding disaster when I began to cut into the crease I made in the very last piece of felt, the end result was this:
The exposed edges are a must, to allow the slats to fit into the grooves in the case, like so:
My deck looks all alone, but I'm very pleased with the result. What's more, each card measures at around 0.33mm in thickness, and each column is a bit over 300mm. By my maths, that equates to about 900 cards in each column with a bit of breathing space, about 6300 cards in total. There's a bit of space between the tops of the cards and the lid, which would probably allow the cards to come loose in transit, so I'm planning on buying some foam padding to lay on top, thick enough to cut grooves out of to hold things like Dungeon cards, Seal cards, dice and level counters etc in future. One thing though, Munchkin cards are a bit slimmer than other card games, so to use this case for another game you'd probably have to sacrifice a column.
For the middle sized case, which had the same slat configuration as the smaller one, I made a couple of extra slats and it ended up like this:
The spacing wasn't quite as spot-on, but the extra breathing room let me keep the foam on the slats. I'd run out of felt thanks to my zero room for error, but plan on buying more for it. as you can see here, the case (on the bottom) isn't much bigger than the card case I originally bought (on the top), but the freedom to move around slats and have the cards stored in portrait rather than landscape allowed me to fit the whole lot into one case.
It's really heavy though, with all the cards in, which worries me for the biggest case in the future. But for now, I'm really pleased with this. On top of everything, the handles feel sturdier and the cases can be locked too, perfect for if you have a bunch of rare cards.
~TiD
Buy the cases on Amazon here, the felt on Amazon here, and the board from B&Q here.
For those buying stateside, there's an equivalent to the large case here, thanks to Donovan of the Official Munchkin Forums for pointing it out.
Awesome. Thanks for sharing.
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