Curled foil cards are a common issue in collectible card games (CCGs) like Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Flesh and Blood. To remove the bend in these cards, one can use the Pringle technique, which involves using tape and a Pringle can. This method takes about six months to flatten a card properly, but it is worth it.
To uncurl MTG foils, place them in a sealed container with a damp Scott towel at the bottom and leave them for 30-90 minutes depending on the severity of the curl. Create a small space with high humidity to rehydrate the card, remove it, and flatten it overnight to reshape. Foils can curl in either direction, folding inward toward the artwork or outward toward the back of the card. To unbend these cards, place them in an air-tight container with a humidor packet for a day or two.
To fix curled foils, subtract the humidity by placing them on a platform-shaped base and placing the cards on top while applying or removing the glue. This method can help prevent the curling of cards and ensure their luster and appearance.
📹 How To FIX CURLED Foils TCG Cards: Magic the Gathering, Flesh and Blood
MTG #curled #foils All you need is a cheap humidor and some time! In this video, we show how we fix our curled foil cards, and …
How to tell if a MTG card is foil?
The latest iteration of the cards features a distinctive marking in the lower left quadrant, accompanied by a star in close proximity to the set symbol. This contrasts with the previous versions of the cards, which lacked this particular marking.
How to flatten a trading card?
Heat can cause bent or bowing of trading cards, even mint-condition ones. To fix this, heat is used to remove humidity. Common methods include using an iron, hair dryer, or ceramic bowl. However, paper cards are flammable, so an iron can burn or set fire to them. Laminated cards can melt under extreme heat. To prevent this, use a cloth as a barrier between the cards and the iron. The iron setting depends on the cloth used, with higher heat resistance requiring a hotter temperature setting.
Why does MTG ban cards?
Magic cards are banned due to their power in their respective formats, and the complexity of Magic makes it difficult to predict how new cards interact with older ones. Racially or culturally offensive cards are also banned in all formats. If a card is on the restricted list for a specific format, only one copy can be used, including both the main deck and sideboard. Currently, only the Vintage format uses a restricted list.
How is Magic card trick done?
Magicians use various techniques and sleight of hand to create astonishing card tricks, focusing on dexterity, precision, and psychological techniques like priming and misdirection. The art of card selection and understanding audience preferences enhance the impact of magic performances. Learn from renowned magicians like David Blaine to acquire new skills and add excitement to your own performances.
The secrets to these mind-bending illusions can often lie in psychology, as magicians manipulate their audience’s choices and perceptions through a deep understanding of human behavior and decision-making processes. This ability to create illusions that seem impossible to explain can be attributed to their mastery of manipulation.
How to fix MTG Pringles?
To fix curled foils, remove humidity by placing them on a platform-shaped base and placing the cards on top. Apply or remove humidity to the environment, allowing the foil cards to return to their regular form. Using a Tupperware Tub or box, paper towel, silicone cupcake molds, sleeves, book, and humidity regulating packs, add moisture to the environment by wetting or spraying the towel. Place the cupcake molds upside down and place the cards on top, ensuring the bent part faces you or the top of the container.
How to keep MTG cards from curling?
A 72-pack can facilitate the arching motion, which is analogous to reverse curling. It would be prudent for the Wizards to address this issue, but in the meantime, it would be advantageous to utilize this strategy.
What causes cards to Pringle?
The primary cause of the curling of foil cards is the presence of humidity in the air.
What causes foils to curl?
The phenomenon of foil curling is susceptible to the influence of humidity. When the ambient humidity is in excess of that present within the printed area of the card, the card itself will expand beyond the capacity of the foil coating to accommodate this change in moisture content.
How Magic cards are made?
Magic cards are made from two layers of cardstock and an adhesive polymer-core, providing a snap and opacity. The blue-core used for Magic cards is an anachronism, as it is less opaque than contemporary black-core, which was not cost-effective in 1992. Contemporary cards may have a purple core due to its recycling requirements. Foil cards have an extra layer, the “white under-print plate”, to highlight certain artwork parts. A varnish coating is applied over printed materials.
Official Magic cards have a Magic card front and back, unless they are double-faced or meld cards. Rules inserts and tokens lack these features, making them not technically cards. Magic cards pass global toy safety regulations for heavy metals and hazardous chemicals, making them non-toxic and safe for normal use and foreseeable abuse for children 8 years and older.
How do you un Pringle a MTG card?
To uncurl most foil Magic cards, raise the card’s moisture in a homemade “hydration chamber”. Create a small space with high humidity to rehydrate the card, remove it, and flatten it overnight to reshape it. Keep in mind that foils placed in higher humidity tend to curl in the opposite direction to those moved to a dry environment. To dry them out, use a different technique. The card’s curling direction can be determined by the way it curls away from you when looking at the front.
Experiment with different foils and set up your process to find the right timing for your environment. Start with cheap common foils and work your way up to more valuable cards as you perfect your process.
How do you unstick magic cards?
If your deck of cards is sticking together due to a gummy coating or specialized edging, try freezing it in a zip lock bag for 3-4 hours. Once removed, gently slap and fan the deck to ensure it is ready to read. If the issue is with a colder temperature, keep handling the deck until it warms up, or place it in your pocket and carry it around your torso. Steam-treating a cold deck is not recommended, as it will not spread or shuffle easily like a warm deck.
If the problem is with oil from your hands, wash your hands and shuffle the cards to spread the existing oils over the entire deck. Sometimes, spreading the oil evenly by deliberately handling all the cards is enough, but sometimes additional steps are needed.
📹 5 Magic: The Gathering Life Hacks That Actually Work
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Regarding the moisture of foils: Paper expands when damp. Foil does not. So if your moisture is too LOW, it will curve foil-forwards as the paper pulls together behind it. Fix it by leaving it in the bathroom while you take a hot shower. And if your moisture is too HIGH it will curve foil-backwards as the paper pushes out around it from behind. Fix it with a hot blow drier. Either way, once you have it straight, double sleeve it to lock it to the proper humidity forever.
another way to prevent curling of your cards, especially if they’re sleeved, is to keep a small moisture pack in your deck box. i wouldn’t recommend the ones in the packs of beef jerky, but those will work in a pinch. i have an Izzet Murktide deck that has several foils in it and the cards don’t show any signs of curling. i feel like it has also helped with shuffling as the sleeves are probably months old by now and don’t shuffle roughly at all
My curled foil trick: I take my cards and tape them to my legs and thighs (Sleeved and curl side out, of course!). Then I go about my work day. When I get home and peel them off, the tape tears so much hair off my legs I get mad and tear up the cards in pain and throw them away. Voila, no more curling! Hope this helps.
THANK YOU!!!!!! I am honestly amazed by hearing about the Pringles being remedied and seeing that it works! It makes one wonder if a few things. 1. Would an all foil deck that’s still shrink-wrapped be able to get straightened out. This is for anyone who gets those Warhammer 40k precons that’re the collectors edition. 2. Would the foil cards curl up again after you straighten them? 3.can a curled foil card that’s single sleeved be able to straighten out without being removed? 4. Can the weight of a commander Deck be an alternate way to straighten out a foil? 5. What happens to a foil card when it’s exposed to like 80% humidity? Would that just get soggy or curl? 6. Do you have any regrets for ruining that Jace card for making that proxy?
Bonus Hack: When putting older cards in sleeves (especially revised or any white border set) let the edge of the sleeve glide across the front surface of the card as it is entering. The sheets are pressed from the front which makes a very minor bevel causing less nicks to the edges. Also any nicks on the back of the card are much more visible because of it’s black border.
These are very useful hacks overall. Great article! I will say with number 3 though (the borders one), I’d only recommend doing this for casual environments like the kitchen table. Making certain cards different like that can easily get you done for an accidental ‘marked cards’ rules violation. I remember cases of a player whose only foil cards in their monored deck were Hellscape Elementals, and that got them some form of punishment, and I believe players have been done for having only foil lands before. Gotta be careful when separating cards!
I would love to see more experimentation of fixing curled foils. I too was always told that cards curled because they soaked up to much humidity in the air and then the cardboard expanded but the foiling did not. I’m curious why this works to be honest and what the TRUE reason foils curl besides WOTC having a horrible foiling process and frankly not caring.
With searching in the deck type thing. Always search through buy pushing the cards from right to left revealing mana cost instead of left to right to see the name. It’s easy to see lands because to cost blips, most colorless are only numbers, and if you know the mana cost of what your looking for its a lot easier to say, look for 3 colorless blue and a black, than stopping to read the first word of each card
Yep, I’ve used that sleeving hack forever. Something else people need to be aware of is, when initially inserting the single-sleeved card into the deck sleeve, the opposite corner of the card catching on the deck sleeve. That can cause damage to the card, but is easy enough to avoid if you’re careful.
Additional tip for those proxy makers out there: the white backside of the art cards (set booster only) work phenomenally if your proxy card has lots of rules text, and takes pen easily. Sometimes the double face card fill-ins work but have experienced great use of my mostly worthless cardboard art 😁
In MN we have issues with cards getting to dry. I have found the humidor packets work wonders and you can get a % which is great. Has fixed my dry card bent cards generally in a couple days and you can recharge the humidor packs via a container with water in it. Cheap, effective, and can do over and over to fix cards. I found it to work best to find a larger plastic container, and spread them out a bit more, do them in batches then double wrap after you’re done and store in a box. Should help a lot and requires minimal. Once the humidor packs seem to dry out, place in same container with a small plastic cup of water for a few days. Restored!
For anyone looking these days try the Dragon Shield resealable sleeves they are essentially the same as the KMC perfect fit sleeves but with also a flap to cover the bottom or top of the card (depends on your preference) this makes it one much easier to slide them into outer sleeves as the card is essentially held captive in the first sleeve and it provides more protection from dirt and dust even if the outer sleeve were to fail or be removed for any reason.
I use my pinky to push it very close to what you showed, I have also been able to uncurel Foil cards by simply placing them in a perfect fit or normal sleeve and then placing them into a very tight fit binder or additional sleeve and then placing the card into a vice like setup for example a book that is very heavy or on the bottom of the book. You can also do it if you have them in a binder that is equally distributed with cards but it needs to be a binder that hasn’t got a uncompressable spine otherwise it won’t work.
my solution for curled cards is to double sleeve them, squish the air out & shove them in the middle of a tight deck box. my reflections of littjara was probably the most curled card i’ve ever gotten, it literally was curled like a banana in a few days it looked completely fine. this has worked for me since i started doing it in 2020, it even flattened out my rings of brighthearth which i bent after sitting on it. this method takes the same time as putting them in a container with a pack, but you don’t have to go out & spend money on a package that controls humidity
in the case of proxies around 6:10 I would recommend writing on the face of basic lands. they are pretty easy to come by, the lack of text makes them easy to mark up and in the case of having some light colored sleeves, they can sometimes be slightly see-through. Grabbing dark colored sleeves or sleeves with the black inner side makes this not needed.
For uncurling foils it helps to increase the surface area exposed to the newly humid air. It will cut down the time you have to wait. Also I tried an experiment for science! You can use literally a piece of bread the same way as a humidity pack for doing this. It actually can uncurl the cards faster (be warned that they’ll curl the other way if you don’t check on them quick enough, but they’ll return back to flat after a short period of time).
I personally go above that mark on humidity and do fewer cards at a time. All of my foil secret lairs are absolutely perfect now. 85% pack in a small air tight deck box only 3-4 cards at a time. Tiny separator to keep the pack from touching the cards physically otherwise I’ve had them curl in the other direction and had to let them sit out a bit. Takes about a day and then I toss them into one of the perfect fits that you tuck the flap into for 4 side protection and never had one curl again
If the edges are curled towards you when you’re looking at the front of the card then that means it’s too much humidity. If it’s curdled away then that means it’s too dry. I use a seasoned cigar humidor to uncurl my foils and I only use 3 standard sized boveda 65 percent packs and I would never stack them on top of each other, that way it takes about 6-12 hours to uncurl. This is a great article but that I had to cringe a little when you used moisture packs that large.
I use the 69% RH packs and only put the cards flat in the container, not stacking. It straightened my MID and VOW set booster bundle foils in about 8 hours per container, although you can only do one or two at a time. Make sure to put them in double sleeves or a hard case to prevent them re-curling as they adjust to the outside humidity.
The reason cards bend is because its too dry and/or theres too much moisture. Only holographic cards bend because of the thin plastic sleeve (shiny paper that makes the card look pretty) not being able to change sizes (expand/contract) compared to regular cardboard. Do a experiment, take a regular card with no foiling and one that has foiling and every single time the one that doesn’t have foiling wont bend because the whole card is just cardboard, it will expand or contract evenly. I recommend that every so often turn on a humidifier in your room so the cards can get hydrated. Too much is also bad because now the cardboard wants to expand but the holographic sleeve wont let it so it bends. Too dry is also bad because now the cardboard wants to contract but the sleeve also wont let it, thus it bends. In most cases, when the card is really dry, it results in the nastiest curls, almost a half circle. Hope this helps.
My bro uses inside sleeves that actually “open” on the side – not top/bottom. Allows the situation you showed to basically never happen. Should be easy to find. For fixing Pringles, I kinda want to try temperature. Refrigerate them. Sounds funny, but I’ll explain. I work in catering. After I complete my orders I’ll put them in the walk in cooler along with a copy of the receipt. Fast forward to delivery time I always notices the receipt lost a lot of regidity. Less like “paper” and more like a “paper towel”. I wonder if you could use this rigidity drop and pressure the cards under a weight. Then take them out of the fridge and leave under the weight maybe? Until the temp rises back and rigidity is restored.
Wouldn’t it be better to just remember which cards were see so u don’t remind ur opponent how many cards they saw. Maybe they forgot 1 cuz they only think they saw 4 cards n confused the 5th card with another copy u played earlier. Turning ur cards upside down is easier for u but also a lil easier for them
as for a possible way to get better/quicker flattening results, using a single layer of cards in the humidity enclosure so top and bottom are able to absorb and have proper airflow helps. otherwise the cards are only absorbing from the side. I used to use a baking cooling rack and then placed the cards single layer in the humidity. 60%+ would flatten cards in an hour or so.
Foil cards should be foil on the back too. That would fix the problem completely. As an engineer, it’s always aggravated me the Wizards fails so hard with the foils. One thing you should always keep in mind when making something out of two different materials stuck together, is that it will bend if they have different properties, like thermal expansion, or in the case of foils, hygroscopicity (how much humidity they absorb) and flexibility. Foil both isn’t hygroscopic at all AND it doesn’t stretch much at all, while cardboard is very hygroscopic, and somewhat stretchy. This difference causes the card to curl in or out depending on how the card’s humidity level changes compared to when it was created at the factory. There’s one simple solution though! Just make it symmetrical, like a sandwich, with foil on the front AND back. Of course in the past, Wizards wasn’t willing to change the card back but now they are so there’s no excuse. Foils should all be foil on the front AND back.
This reminds me of an experience when I was handling a gate deck during RTR season. Said deck has at least almost 2/3 of its cards in foil (mostly the gates and a couple of fog/draw spells and effects and even a foil Supreme Verdict). I’ve had the same experience about the foils curling up. At the time, I’ve been trying to have said deck pimped up to have 100% foiled, so I usually buy foil versions of the cards and put them in the deck (fully sleeved of course). The nonfoils removed from their sleeves were jam packed into the deckbox, and the space became so tight that it all flattened the curled foils back to normal. Don’t know if this is due to the humidity/heat principle for tip 2, but this could be another way of flattening foil cards. And before anyone asks, no, there are no unsleeved rare nonfoils in my deckbox at time. They were mostly fog effects and gain/draw spells like Fog, Riot Control, Rest for the weary, and a few nonfoil gates lol.
Having the right humidity not a little humidity but the proper amount of humidity argument is actually true all right I buy a pack of rolling papers that are at 300 count now imagine 300 rolling papers some of them are going to start the curl up when they get dried out you know the trick to straighten out a curled up rolling paper you hold it in your hand you straighten out the curl and you breathe on it with hot air the moisture from it well then bring the straightness right back!!!!
I’ve suspected a combination of weight + humidity control would help curled cards. You can repair a guitar with a warped neck by returning it to the humidity of the factory it was made in. My grandfather’s Martin twisted after being near a wood stove, and then returned to form when it was brought back to his house, as an example.
It’s not the foil that is curving, it’s the paper that the foil is not attached to is what is shrinking. And it’s shrinking due to dessication, aka drying out. So remoisturizing the card via humidification should do the trick. That means at whatever factory Wizards is using to make foils, they need to dry the cards out fully and then print the foils so later the cards won’t dry out and curve afterward.
Thanks again for the article Nik! I have found a few particulars in working with foils the way you describe. I like boveda 69% in the number 8 size. The number 8 size is about a quarter the size of the packet you show in this article. This will allow you to place them more evenly in a container. Another thing is, when putting the foils in to the chamber initially, I like to alternate them front to back. It will form an accordian style shape. I then put pressure on them and rotate them every 8 hours or so for a day. Toward the end it shouldnt matter if they are front to back, but stacking them that way ensures the cards are treated more evenly in your chamber. As a print production project manager, this drives me crazy, because it means multiple, multi-million dollar facilities are not managing their environmental factors. It could be as simple as running a humidifier in an air conditioned building, or turning up a thermostat a few degrees. Remember: Humidity is a measurement of saturation in the air, and the lower the temprature, the less water the air can hold. That may explain why my bulk boxes in a warmer room of my house upstairs has more straight foils than some other bulk in the house.
The only problem with the inner sleeve trick is it’s tournament-illegal. The rules of magic actually state, like all other card games, that all sleeves have to be identical (to a degree. If you have a 60 card double-sleeved deck with one inner sleeve from KMC and the other 59 inners from Dragon Shield, no one is gonna care). This applies to inners and outers, so if you’re playing tournaments and want to do the “easy search” trick for the sleeves…you can’t. Also, generally, any homemade-white-border cards would also be illegal for tounaments. The thought behind the big 3 TCGs outlawing one-sleeve or some-sleeve differences is that it gives you an unfair advantage. Let’s say it’s the last 3 minutes of a match, you could win, if you found your good card quickly. You play a search card, and, because the border of this one card is different, you grab it really fast, allowing you to get in a pinch win. It’s fine for casual magic, but for tournaments you can’t.
@Nikachu liked and subbed! I think I am finally able to get passed you saying OG Nicol Bolas is a low power card. I often neuter an opponent with him in my Scion of the Ur Dragon deck and sometimes even the whole table at once via Chandra’s Ignition. Can sneak attack him out, Kaalia, etc haha. Great content dude!
So I know I’m super late to this party. So I’ve been playing since 2002. And over that time I have come across various damage to cards. Laying flat being a big issue. This same fix actually works for me for damage as well as Pringle. Take single cards at a time. Put them between a layer of paper towel (front and back) and use a hot clothes iron and flatten them. While the card is still warm, place a heavy object or book on it. Leave it for about an hour or so. The card will be flat. Same thing for water damage or cards that won’t lay flat
Better way to double sleeve. 1. Insert card into kmc perfect size 2. Insert sleeved card into dragon shield sleeve about half way 3. Shim/guide the card with one of the advert cards from booster packs. This way you’re not sticking your finger in the sleeves and causing bending/stretching or putting as much oil between your sleeves. Normally I’ll do each step until one done that step with the deck then move to the next step with the whole deck so it’s the same repeated action rather than changing actions. This really cuts down on time for me and makes it very brainless.
To double sleeve, I insert a basic land together with the sleeved card into the outer sleeve, push them both towards the bottom, then pick the basic land back. I’ve a feeling it’s a bit easier on your cards, but it may not make that much of a difference. Also, using different inner sleeves for searchable cards won’t influence on their thickness and make them marked cards?
i love making the lands white bordered because i started the game during the release of one of the old core sets so i always like using the basics from that set when needed. i will say though multiple people accused me of doing it so i can see the lands while shuffling. I’m not that slick lol i dont even know if that can be a cheat method? i have seen some people detect foils in their deck with shuffling techniques but often that foil is blatantly curled never seen it by people using different colored borders.
If you have ever accidentally had your deck submerged in water, you will double sleeve for the rest of your life. Removing my cards where the art was coming off on the sleeve was one of the worst days of my life. Cards in those decks (lost 6 decks that day) I got from friends and family all gone forever.
To those that think that there’s any more tricks or anything else you can learn from humidity packs or a article about them try chapstick after all it helps with chapped lips it should help with chapped cards lmfao like come on ppl 😂 if you’re under 18 then have your parents go in and buy it for you or a sibling after all it’s not like you’re buying anything illegal or nefarious it’s a humidity pack you’re just not allowed to go into the stores because you’re not of age it’s not like you’re not allowed to buy it
As a card shop owner. Writing on the back is one of the most annoying things. Not enough time in the day to look at the backs of cards until you go to sell it. A lot of the time people write on stuff that has gone up over the years. Pull it out of the back and go to sell it, check the condition and……I can give you a discount or I can go grab a different one. Just write on the front of newer basic lands if you want to proxy.
writing on the back of the card to make a card is cheating. if used as a filler thats fine if you actually have to card to show per copy. another hack for those quick searches… open the deck the other way and look at the casting cost, chances are you know what the cost or at least mana symbols for the card your searching for is. the moisture will soften the card that makes it flatten, if you use some light weights in the container might help speed it up. might be something to try.
I don’t know if this is a hack or not but when rolling for who goes first I have started using one plus one counter die and and a negative counter die and it makes loosing the roll a little more fun when u loose the roll by rolling a one and and minus 3 and you or your opponent roll two and minus 2 for a total of 0
Is this a general tournament rule? My local judge said if I want to I can make a proxy writing on a land I’m not using or those cards used in draft for double face cards as long as I have on me but not in the deck the real card. He let my dad do that during a prerelease when he got a foil card worth at the time over $100 and my dad purposely doesn’t play expensive cards due to a neurology problem. For me I told the judge I on purpose don’t make decks with cards I have been finding that are too expensive. Such as my most resent constructed I took out of my deck a card I didn’t know until I looked it up at home before the tournament was over $100. So I replaced it with a crappier card. Reason I have taken the judge on his offer is I would feel bad having a bunch of proxies (kind you made). Unless say it was commander and my only proxy was the commander. (Hasn’t happened yet) so I would have the real card in a hard sleeve in a clear box. (My idea for how to storage it. )
Man great great advice sorry for the many comments I’m somebody that will actually comment as I watch the article and if I find something worth commenting about you’ll get a comment lol but really great hacks I especially love the double wrap finger trick and the humidity pack cuz I can tell you right now not a lot of people know about that trick!!!
instead of humidity, just shove them in a deck box that is packed s full as it can be, and leave them alone for few weeks. they will flatten out. I do this with all of mine, and they never recurl. Also, Dragonshield sealable inner sleeves are the superior inner sleeve, and they don’t give you problems when putting them in a normal sleeve.
I have a pretty large collection of MTG cards that I bought when I was back in school during the mid to latter 90s (something around revised / fourth edition) which then got boxed up and forgotten about. Not really sure if they’re worth selling considering it’s not something like a full Beta collection. Thoughts?