results

History

June 3, 2026

The Big Move

After 10 years operating out of basements and a windowless warehouse, TCG Machines has moved into a dedicated 15,000 square-foot facility – with windows! So many windows.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

May 12, 2026

How To Depreciate Your PhyzBatch-9000

As Tax season comes to a close here in Canada, we at TCG Machines wanted to give all of our wonderful customers a gift for this joyous holiday: a guide on how to recover the cost of your PhyzBatch-9000 through tax deductions (Yippee!)

Luke Turner

Jr. Sales Associate

Automation

March 12, 2026

Robot Wars

A recap of our attendance at the 2026 GAMA Expo! It was a show to remember, with a record number of automation exhibitors and a big announcement from Roca and TCGplayer.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

January 14, 2026

2025 Recap

2025 was one hell of a year for TCG Machines. We doubled our staff, doubled revenue, doubled the number of countries we export to, and tripled our production capacity. We also exhibited at our first ever overseas convention (Spiel Essen), had three patents granted, won an Innovation Award, and I ran a marathon. Yeah. Pretty dull times.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

September 17, 2025

Drinking from a Firehose

With growth comes increasingly big decisions at greater frequency. Rent or buy? Buy it or build it? Build more or focus on R&D? Coke or Pepsi? There are no right answers to these questions, but the future of a growing number of people hangs in the balance! Also, monster trucks.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

August 14, 2025

Tariffs? Trump? Turmoil??

In the light of the state of the US/Canada border being what it is, we've decided to help shed some light on some misconceptions.

Nathan Day

Sales & Marketing Manager

Team TCGM

June 9, 2025

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

More hires, Nicholas Cage, R&D initiatives, government projects, meeting the mayor, key person insurance, tariffs, news interviews, half-marathons, facility tours, bomb defusal, pitch competitions, conferences, comparison to a yak – all in the span of a month! May you live in interesting times.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

April 30, 2025

Scaling Up

TCG Machines is on a rather meteoric ride, having doubled revenues – or better – every year for the past five consecutive years. The challenge now is to navigate this “hockey stick” growth without sacrificing the quality of our product, the level of our customer support, or our kick-ass corporate culture. Woop woop woop woop woop woop woop!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

March 10, 2025

GAMA 2025 - A Retrospective

TCG Machines vs GAMA Expo: Round 2!

Nathan Day

Sales & Marketing Manager

Team TCGM

February 13, 2025

Countdown to GAMA 2025

Only 10 days to go until the 2025 GAMA Expo! TCG Machines will be exhibiting there again this year, along with SPIEL Essen in October, and potentially others in what is shaping up to be a jam-packed year! Also, I’m running a marathon in Amsterdam? Whaaaat?

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

History

January 2, 2025

10-Year Anniversary of TCG Machines

Today is TCG Machines' 10th birthday and, coincidentally, it is also the day our fleet of PhyzBatch-9000 trading card sorting machines surpassed 300 million cards collectively processed.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

December 20, 2024

The Mad Dash to the Holidays - and One Piece Now Live!

It's not easy making it another year in the trading card automation business - and we're happy to say this has been an excellent one.

Nathan Day

Sales & Marketing Manager

History

December 17, 2024

Trading Card Sorting Robots: A Graveyard of Dreams

Every few months someone with big dreams – and often laudable goals and intentions as well – will post an automatic trading card scanner/sorter project to the internet, generating a flurry of excitement. Sadly, most of these people have their ambitions slowly crushed by the overwhelming complexity of the task and they eventually abandon the project. Hence, today’s post!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

September 30, 2024

Hustlin' from Dawn 'til Duskmourn

Looking back over August and September as TCG Machines powers into the fourth quarter of a record-setting year for PhyzBatch-9000 orders. We added support for Lorcana, One Piece is on the horizon, our staff is playing and competing regularly in tournaments, and TCG manufacturers are printing unprecedented volumes – tens of billions of new cards every year! It’s a great time to be in the trading card business.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Development

August 9, 2024

Lorcana is Live!

As of today, TCG Machines' PhyzBatch-9000 automatic card sorter robot has full support for the Disney Lorcana Trading Card Game! Woot-woot!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

July 9, 2024

Billing, Branding & Better Business

The path to startup glory is fraught with peril, pitfalls and... PowerPoint presentations?

Nathan Day

Sales & Marketing Manager

Psychology

June 21, 2024

Getting Back into the Game

For the past five years, it’s been difficult to make time for anything outside of kids and work, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for “me time”. But, over the last few months, I’ve been putting a focus on bringing card games back into my life, and it’s been wonderful.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

May 15, 2024

Ridiculous Value

Dan and I recently had the privilege of attending CETAC West’s week-long Entrepreneur to CEO Workshop, and I really can’t overstate how valuable the experience was for us. The schedule was intense, to say the least, but there was absolutely no “fluff”, and we are already putting much of what we learned into practice.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Team TCGM

March 15, 2024

2024 GAMA Expo In Review

After spending years on the waiting list, TCG Machines finally exhibited at the 2024 GAMA Expo in Louisville, Kentucky!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

History

February 5, 2024

The Mike Bower Story – An Extraordinary Career in Collectible Comics and Cards

This is my interview with Mike, a happily retired LGS owner. Through a combination of intelligence, a strong work ethic, and truly exceptional timing, Mike carved himself out a remarkable career path that will not soon be repeated. He opened a comic store in 1994 when he was just 21, qualified for the MtG Pro Tour 13 times, amassed an awe-inspiring personal inventory of high value comics and Magic cards, and retired in his 40s. Good luck doing that today!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

News

January 18, 2024

TCG Machines partners with webuyanycard to launch the PhyzBatch-9000 in the UK!

TCG Machines, producer of the PhyzBatch-9000 trading card processing machine, today announced a partnership with UK-based webuyanycard that will see the launch of the PhyzBatch-9000 in the United Kingdom.

Matt French

Public Relations Strategist

Development

November 17, 2023

How to Feed Trading Cards to a Robot

When it comes to making a product, perfection can never be achieved. All we can do is make improvements which continue to narrow the gap between theoretical perfection and reality. To this end, our Engineering Team has been hard at work developing a new and improved card feeding system!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Development

September 26, 2023

The Great Refactoring

Having scalable, maintainable code is of vital importance to any software-based business. Thus, when a company’s legacy code was written by a monkey with no formal training in software development, there must eventually be a reckoning!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

History

July 2, 2023

100 Million Cards PhyzBatched

As of today, our collective fleet of PhyzBatch-9000 card sorting robots have processed more than 100-million cards. That’s 200 tons of cards, equivalent to 30 adult male African elephants!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Team TCGM

May 31, 2023

Conventions and Expos and Fairs, Oh My!

The TCG Machines Team attended our first ever convention last month, and now we are gearing up for the next one!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Development

March 3, 2023

Our Robots Can Read!

Literacy is important, so we taught our machines how to read! This new ability opens the door to lots of exciting new features.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

History

February 1, 2023

100 Machines

Production models of the PhyzBatch-9000 card sorting machine first shipped out in June 2022, and today we deployed our 100th machine!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Development

January 31, 2023

Lists, Lists, Baby!

2022 is over and Santa has put his naughty-nice list away for the year, but here at TCG Machines we’re just getting started with lists!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Automation

November 6, 2022

Running a Business Be Like...

Running a business is difficult enough without any “extra” challenges thrown in. This past month, TCG Machines has been hit with a double-whammy of regulatory compliance updates and an audit by the Canada Revenue Agency. Buckle up, ‘cause things are about to get ranty.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

History

September 12, 2022

Production is Hard

We stand on the shoulders of giants, yet seem destined to make their same giant missteps! Production of the PhyzBatch-9000 automatic card sorter is in full swing, and we are learning many important lessons the hard way.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Psychology

July 26, 2022

Great Expectations

With our first production machines now rolling out the door, customers who have been patiently waiting for months are getting their first taste of the PhyzBatch-9000 card sorter.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Business

May 10, 2022

The $50,000 Sticker

There is so much that goes into the development of a product, most of which is unknown to the end user. One of these myriad elements is product testing; while necessary for ensuring conformity to safety and regulatory standards, it’s freakin’ expensive!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

History

March 31, 2022

World Records and Elephant Seals

With production now underway for the PhyzBatch-9000 card sorter, we take a look at some of the impressive milestones achieved with our Beta Trial machines.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Development

March 24, 2022

Meaningful and Inclusive - Renaming "master" Branch to "main"

Since June 2020, many companies have begun making the switch in Git, deleting the "master" branch in favor of "main". I wanted to take a closer look at why.

Stephen Baker

Senior Developer

Development

February 18, 2022

Advanced Sort Mode

An “Advanced Sort Mode” or “Lot Creation Tool” has long been the most highly requested software feature from our customers. As of this week, we have delivered that functionality!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Team TCGM

February 4, 2022

The Never Ending Story

In spite of a global pandemic, supply chain crisis, staff shortages, disruptions to childcare, and other fun challenges, production of the PhyzBatch-9000 card sorting bot is underway!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Team TCGM

December 7, 2021

Meet the Team - Lisa

Meet our new Operations Manager, Lisa, and help her learn how to play TCG's.

Lisa Martin

Operations Manager

TCG

November 2, 2021

The Rise of Trading Cards

Published in the 1860s as a worthless piece of cardboard, nobody could have imagined that trading cards would come such a long way. Nowadays, in 2021, trading cards have grown into a multi-million dollar market, in which a single card can be worth up to $1,000,000! However, the future of these little rectangular playing cards is still a mystery to us all.

Long Tran

Intern

TCG

October 12, 2021

Pokémon – Gotta Sort 'Em All

The PhyzBatch-9000 card sorting machine is now officially a Pokémon card sorter!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

Automation

September 20, 2021

Card Sorter Commercialization

Ensuring our automatic card sorter conforms to emissions standards may not be sexy or exciting, but it was an important step forward down the commercialization pathway.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

History

June 4, 2021

If You Build It...

Exactly one month into our launch and we have already blown past our production quota! The reception from the LGS community has been unreal, and now come the challenges of production, scaling, and delivery.

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

History

May 4, 2021

Launch Day

After years of development, we are beyond excited to officially introduce our robotic card sorter to the world: the PhyzBatch-9000 trading card sorting machine!

Graeme Gordon, P.Eng.

President & CEO

TCG