Product Review: BCW 18-Pocket Pro Pages
Last week we reviewed one of my favorite accessories, the BCW 8-Pocket Pro-Folio LX. One of the downsides of the Pro-Folio is that it's not expandable; you can hold 320 cards and then you have to get a second binder. That's fine if you're just carrying around a limited trade selection, but what if you wanted to store your entire collection? Or maybe you like to carry around all your legacy playable cards? Today we're going to review the BCW 18-Pocket Pro Pages; loose pages that you can stick in a 3-ring binder for infinitely expandable capacity (well, at least up to the maximum binder size you can find and carry!)
Initially these look like your typical 9-pocket pages, but these come with some extra features: First, the pockets are sideloading and open towards the center of the page. This prevents cards from spilling all over the place if you happen to hold your binder upside down. Second, there are actually 18-pockets; 9 on each side with a divider inbetween each side. This is actually very important. If you use a regular 9-pocket page and put two cards in each pocket to make it double-sided, the pockets stretch so that single cards no longer sit in them (they will easily fall out). This is probably the most common failure of 9-pocket pages; stretched pockets that spill your cards all over the place! The double-sided by design feature of the BCW 18-Pocket Pro Pages keeps your cards safe while maintaining maximum capacity! The pockets themselves are sturdy and can hold regular cards, and have enough room to hold even entire playsets in a pocket (I don't actually recommend this due to the potential for stretching). The lining on the pages (i.e. the backing on the pockets) come in five different colors — conveniently the five colors of Magic. I like to sort my trades by color, so this color coding makes that super easy.
The BCW 18-Pocket Pro Pages are great and I highly recommend them. I don't see another product beating them in terms of quality, so it's going to come down to price. The MSRP for a 10-pack (e.g. 180 card capacity) is $5.60, which is $0.56 per page. Compared the BCW 8-Pocket Pro-Folio LX, which is $19.99 for 320 cards, that's about half the price — $3.10/100 cards vs $6.20/100 cards. So if you want a premium binder but want to save some money, or want a premium binder with infinite capacity, pick up some BCW 18-Pocket Pro Pages and dig out an old college/high school binder or two!
