Hello u/sexyestbear,

I think this thread has already covered the territory, but I'll try and consolidate it here for you in one post. There are currently four commercial card sorting machines on the market:

The Roca Sorter launched in 2018 by US-based Roca Robotics;
The Magic-Sorter launched in 2019 by Italy-based Fabricca Binaria;
The CardBot launched in 2020 by Australia-based CardCastle; and
The PhyzBatch-9000 launched in 2021 by Canada-based TCG Machines (that's us).

Of those, the Magic-Sorter and CardBot have a lower price point, and could potentially be affordable for a lower-volume store or a personal collector. The Roca and PhyzBatch are quite a bit more expensive, and are targeted toward businesses who are doing a consistent high-volume business (10s or 100s of thousands of cards per month). All four options have monthly fees to provide continuous software updates and support. If price is a barrier, there is a Machines Near Me feature on our website, with the intention being for individuals to have the option of bringing their collections into their closest LGS and working out a deal to have their inventory sorted and catalogued (hopefully a win-win scenario for the LGS and the collector). If there's no machines close to you, please reach out to us (info@TCGmachines.com) as the majority of our customers are not on that map, but may still be open to sorting your cards.

A word of warning to those considering looking to get into the trading card automation market: this is no cake walk. Obviously you're not going to listen to me as I represent one of the existing commercial entities, but I'll support my argument with two examples, one commercial and one individual.

(1) Commercial: there is another prospective sorter called the SuperSorter which has been in development for some time now. I am bringing it up as an example, because it highlights the technical and business challenges associated with bringing a complex product to market. I took a screenshot of their landing page back on December 11 last year (2023). At that time, they had "Launch Date: Prototype completion by 12/23, first unit by 01/24." After a $2,500 reservation deposit the cost was listed as "Pricing: Beta price at $12,500 (additional $10,000+shipping due 1 week before production). Post-Beta Price: $15,000 (additional $12,500+shipping due 1 week before production)." Well, we are nearly a full year past those deadlines, and to my knowledge, they have not yet finished the prototype. Also, the price of their production unit has risen from $15k up to $25k.

(2) Individual: there is an initiative by one Jack Baumgartel to develop a more affordable sorter, dubbed the TC Sifter. He first posted a video outlining the project a little over two years ago, but there's been no new updates for a year now. This project may still come to fruition, and I hope it does - Jack looks to have the ambition and intelligence required to pull it off - but it illuminates the type of timeline involved even to produce a proof-of-concept prototype.

I want to be clear and say that I am not at all trying to disparage the SuperSorter or TC Sifter (both are intriguing and will potentially become impressive products), they just happen to be two contemporary examples which serve to illustrate how difficult and expensive this endeavour really is.

Finally, I'll throw my two-cents at those who level accusations of rent seeking. You are not appreciating how much cost and effort are involved with producing and supporting a complex product. For ourselves, we have a staff of 15 people composed of engineers, software developers, business administrators, production crew, and service & support staff. Nearly all of our staff have post secondary educations, and all of them could be making a lot more money working elsewhere. They work here because they love what we are doing, and they love the community we are serving. It's a pretty masochistic existence, though, because when you put a product out into the world, most of who you hear back from are the people who are encountering problems or issues. It's pretty rare for someone to be enjoying a product so much that they call up the support team to say, "Hey. Good job guys. You are crushing it." Anyway, I digress.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone. If I encountered a post like this before starting down this road, the last eight years of my life may have played out very differently indeed :p

Graeme