There are several things for which the human brain is not well equipped. One such thing is the comprehension of large numbers. Today, as of 11:43 AM (MST), our collective fleet of PhyzBatch-9000 card sorters surpassed a rather staggering milestone: 100-million cards PhyzBatched (scanned, physically separated, and digitally cataloged), amounting to 200 tons, or 180 metric tons, of product processed by our machines. To put that number into perspective, a fully-grown bull African elephant (pictured below) – the largest land animal on our planet - can weigh 6,000 kg [13,000 lbs.], which is six metric tons. So, if you were to put 100-million trading cards on a balancing scale, you would need 30 of those elephants to balance the scale. 30! That is insane!

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Bernard Dupont

If elephants aren’t doing anything for you, another way to try and visualize the sheer quantity of cards we’re talking about is with a distance measurement. If you were to place 100-million TCG cards into a neat stack, much as you would with a typical deck of playing cards, that stack would be 32.5 km [20 miles] tall. This column of cards would reach into the Earth’s stratosphere, meaning TCG Machines has inadvertently entered the space race. Look out, Elon!

OK, I think I’ve burned through my quota of exclamation marks for this blog post. But, just for good measure: !!!

So, what does this mean, and where do we go from here? Well, considering that each of the world’s most popular three trading card games (Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, and Yu-Gi-Oh!) each print more than one-billion cards every year, I don’t see us running out of cards to PhyzBatch any time soon. Oh, and don’t forget about the 120-billion or so TCG cards which are already in print. Have I mentioned that there are also sports cards? No? Well, there are. Really, our machines are only beginning to scratch the surface (eek, poor choice of words – our machines handle cards extraordinarily gently) of the enormous volume of cards which are out there in the world. And there’s more on the way! Disney will be releasing their much-anticipated new TCG, Lorcana, in mid-August. Clearly, the TCG market does not have a supply problem.

Here at TCG Machines, we will continue to support and improve upon our services for the TCGs we currently handle (Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon) while working feverishly to accommodate more trading card games (Yu-Gi-Oh!, Flesh and Blood, and Lorcana), as well as sports cards. It’s a tall order, keeping up with all these different trading cards, but we have a world-class team here dedicated to doing exactly that.