One billion trading cards sorted worldwide, and many, many billions more to go. TCG Machines announced late last week its global fleet of card-sorting robots recently reached the milestone. The Calgary-based company says that’s 2,000 tons of trading cards. Which is equivalent to about 15 blue whales’ weight. Or about 200 adult Tyrannosaurus rexes. It’s a lot, and the folks behind TCG Machines are proud card-sorting robot parents. They also acknowledge it’s a drop in the bucket—or market. John Webster, vice-president of operations, said there are “a lot of trading card games out there.” “The two biggest ones being Pokémon (and) Magic the Gathering,” he said. “To give you an example of scale, Pokémon printed 10 billion cards last year, and it’s probably going to do the same again this year.” The PhyzBatch-9000 started with founder and CEO Graeme Gordon. There are now “about 400” robots in “about 20” countries, Webster told CTV News. Liam Hoban, managing director of Sentry Box Cards in Calgary, said it’s been using the current iteration for “about two and a half years now.” He said the store has been using one iteration or another for “six or seven years.” “It is a massive game-changer for our store,” he said. “We probably have a million-plus unsorted cards we have to work through. “We are so much more efficient (with it).” In the before times, it would fall to a shop employee to sit on a backroom floor, flipping through card after card after card. Hoban will tell you it’s a monotonous task. He said having a robot that can do it “is incredible.” The PhyzBatch-9000 works off a massive database to sort cards by any number of identifying parameters. It’ll suss out the clearly valuable cards, and the cards that might be valuable to the right someone. Webster said when the billionth card was sorted, the team “had a little cheer and celebration and patted ourselves on the back.” But he said there are more machines to make, and more improvements to make for them. “We’re still just scratching the surface,” he said. “It’s a huge industry. I think the market cap for this year should be around 20 billion.” With files from Tommy Osborne
