Product Review: BCW 8-Pocket Pro-Folio LX
Today we're going to take a look at the BCW 8-Pocket Pro-Folio LX. Card binders can be used for a variety of purposes: to show off your collection, to hold your trades, or secure storage for expensive cards. Personally I don't do much trading, but I do use binders to hold my more expensive cards for easy access and protection. The 8-Pocket Pro-Folio LX has 20 double-sided pages which holds 8-cards on each side for a total of 320 cards. That's right, 8-pocket pages! When I first saw the binder, I did a double take. We're all familiar with the usual 9-pocket pages, but it looks like this binder was designed with Magic the Gathering in mind. No more awkwardness in splitting playsets (4x cards) over two pages; you can fit two full playsets on each side for easy organization! The trade-off to this is that the pockets sideways meaning you need to use the binder in a horizontal layout (turned sideways). This different from what we're used to, but it's easy to get used to.
In terms of protection, the 8-Pock Pro-Folio LX is great. The pockets open to the inside so there's no risk of your cards falling out. The pockets are sized nicely so that they can fit an unsleeved card, as well as a single or even double-sleeved card. The front and back covers are padded leatherette to give a little cushioning and there's a sturdy elastic band to keep the whole thing closed. The whole binder looks pretty classy and discreet with the Pro-Folio LX name embossed in front. The binder comes in the five MTG colors (white, black, green, red, blue).
If you haven't used a premium binder before, I would definitely give this a try. It's a definite upgrade over the 9-pocket pages designed 40 years ago for baseball cards. No more cards falling out, and 8-pocket pages are perfect for the OCD MTG players who cannot bear to have their playsets split up. The only downside to the product is that you can't expand it by added more pages. You'll have to get a second binder if you need more storage. The binder MSRP is $19.99 and you can find them on Amazon.
