MOTIVATION
The pains that gave birth to innovation
JULY 21ST, 2026
This is where it all started for me.
First, let's back up a few decades.
Collecting as a child: a tale shared by many
I was really into playing sports as a kid. When I was about eight years old, I started playing baseball; that's also when I started collecting baseball cards. I never had anything considered "valuable", but I had my basic 3-ring binder that I loved to look through and reorganize by set, by team, or by whatever I was feeling that month.
A couple years later, I discovered the Pokémon TV show and eventually the trading card game. Along with so many other kids my age, I got really into collecting and playing. I had a Pokémon binder with my full Pokédex from the Base, Jungle, and Fossil sets. When the later sets came out and there were multiple cards for each creature, I had to figure out new ways to organize them while still keeping each creature in numeric order.
The next school year, I went back with my collection expecting to play and trade again, but one other kid I didn't even know made fun of me for still liking Pokémon, and that was it for me: I was done. The day soon came when I sold all of my Pokémon cards, and later my baseball cards.
Collecting as an adult: fun again
Jumping forward to 2023, I was married and had kids of my own. I had played Pokémon Go with them and reminisced in the fun I had with the games and the tv show as a kid. One day, they came home with Pokémon cards from McDonalds. Our oldest son was struggling with math, and I remembered that the Pokémon card game had basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication as part of the mechanics.
I went out and bought a (looking back, seriously overpriced) box of bulk cards from someone locally, and that was it for me: I was back in. I started regrowing my now all-holographic Pokédex from modern cards and kept them in a 3-inch three-ring D-ring binder.
I was looking through my cards one day, and I found my Pidgeot ex card with that dent from the ring; it hurt a little bit, not because it had lost a lot of monetary value, but because I had opened it from my first booster box I had bought for myself, and I loved the colors and art. I didn’t want that to happen again.
It turns out this experience is not at all uncommon. A short search online will yield a bunch of other collectors demonstrating the problem (see the screen captures below). Since this was a common problem, I assumed there had to be something out there to prevent this.
Searching for a solution
My collection moved to smaller D-ring binders, and I was extra cautious when turning the pages. Still, I couldn't control how other people were going to handle my pages. I had to keep a close eye when letting kids look through my cards, and even some more serious collectors were more haphazard with page-turning than I had expected. It was an imperfect solution, and it took the fun out of sharing my collection.
Trading card portfolios lock your pages in place
I started looking for something better. Obviously, there was the portfolio-style binder, but I still consider myself a creative collector; I knew I was going to want to add, remove, and rearrange cards. I assumed there had to be something out there with rearrangeable pages and no risk of damaging my cards.
After a couple of months of searching and asking Reddit and Facebook communities, I came up empty-handed. I realized if I wanted my ideal binder, I was going to have to make it myself.
Sound familiar?
This started as a personal project, but I know I’m not the only one faced with this undesirable compromise. If you are one of the many in this position, I believe I have come up with the optimal solution for you and for me. To bring it to life, I need to hit factory minimums. That’s where you come in.
I’m launching a Kickstarter campaign soon to make this binder a reality for collectors everywhere.
How you can help:
Follow the Kickstarter Pre-Launch Page so you don't miss out on limited early-bird pricing.
Subscribe to our mailing list to get notified when the campaign launches and to follow the rest of the prototyping journey.
You can do both of these on the home page.
