Holy smokes! It has been a very, very long road to get to this point. Today, we are incredibly excited to introduce the PhyzBatch-9000 (pronounced “fizz batch”, so called because it physically batch-sorts cards… 9000!), the world’s fastest and most versatile trading card sorting machine. Developing a machine capable of quickly and gently sorting cards was no easy feat, and we took our sweet time! The very first proof-of-concept prototype was assembled way back in November 2015, and it wasn’t until October 2018 (many iterations later) that we had our Alpha Prototype in an actual card shop. By the end of 2019, we had most of the bugs ironed out and we’d run a cool million cards through ol’ Alphy. In August 2020 we started the Beta Trials, in which Beta Prototype machines were distributed to seven local game stores to test our hardware and software systems across a network of customers. Now with more than 10,000 hours of product development, six years of prototyping, three years of field testing, millions of cards sorted, and many hundreds of machine operating hours logged, the PhyzBatch-9000 is finally ready for the world stage.

So, what is this “PhyzBatch” and what exactly can it do? At this point in time, it is strictly a Magic: The Gathering card sorting machine, though we will be expanding into Pokémon and even sports cards. The PhyzBatch has a 1,750-card input capacity and can be loaded and unloaded continuously, even while a sort is in progress. With 13 output bins, you can have your cards physically separated by any metric imaginable after just a single pass through the machine. If you want your cards sorted to the highest degree of order possible (broken out into the set they were printed in with individual cards grouped together), you just need to pass them through the machine a few extra times!

Now for the really fun stuff: we have developed world-first technology (patent pending) which lets the PhyzBatch-9000 determine whether or not a card is a foil, and to assign the correct price accordingly. What’s more, we are in development of card condition assessment software which will assign a three-tiered grade (mint/near-mint, slightly-played, or heavily-played) to cards as they are scanned. There’s one final thing worth mentioning: the PhyzBatch-9000 is fast. Really fast. We’re talkin’ top-speed-over-100-cards-per-minute fast. Yes, average sorting speeds may be closer to 70 or 80 cards per minute, depending on the collection you’re sorting, but we think you’ll still be suitably impressed.

Who exactly is this product for? We created the PhyzBatch-9000 as a tool for local game stores (LGS), not for individual card players and collectors. So, if you own or work at an LGS, then you’ve come to the right place! That said, if you have a massive personal collection and would love to have your cards automatically sorted and appraised at ludicrous speed, then march yourself down to your LGS and implore them to consider acquiring a PhyzBatch-9000! If they tell you that’s a stupid name for a card sorting robot, you have our permission to tell them, “No it’s not – you’re a stupid name!” and then leave in a huff.

May the Fourth be with you… always.