I picked this game up when I was in 5th or 6th grade and still have a lot of the vintage cards that came out around that time. Recently someone suggested that.I pick up a hobby and here I am. I know the rules and how the game has played, and thanks to MTG 2015 on Xbox I was able to get the rust off but I still don't know which cards are legal. Some YouTube videos I watched say that players are limited to the last four sets that were released, and then beyond that I'm lost.

I brushed off the dust and organized the older cards by color and type, but I don't know if it's okay to mix them in with everything else. I'm afraid I'll find myself studying the tiny symbol in the middle right of the card that stands for which edition it's a part of. Can anybody give me any advice? I'm going to go to a card shop and speak to one of the guys that's nearby, but I'm actually looking forward to getting reacquainted with my cards and building a deck. I just don't know which cards I can use to make a legal deck, and I'm sure that legacy play isn't what most people are playing, and plus, I'll probably end up with my head handed to me.

Any help or advice anyone can give would be very much appreciated. Glad to see that Magic is still thriving. I think it's a great game for kids and keeps them out of trouble. I know it did for me.

Originally, I just sorted my bulk cards by color, and then all the rares were pulled out and also sorted by color in a different binder or container. A few years ago, I decided that this was just to annoying to to try to find things, and I draft a lot so I have a pretty decent amount of cards per set. So to make things easier, I've just been waiting until a given set finishes, then going through and sorting out play-sets by collector number (which also ends up being color sorted and alphabetical), and then storing all of those cards (minus the rares) in an empty booster box for that set. It tends to work out that a play-set of commons and uncommons for any given set is just enough to fill an empty booster box, so the system sorta works well enough. For the rares, I've got a ton of old "fat-pack" boxes that I use to store those as needed.

Having started before Exodus, I sort my cards by color, then by "type" (creature or noncreature), then by mana cost, then by color weight (so all creatures come after all creatures), then alphabetically.

If I were starting over now, I'd go by set then collector number.

The formats of play are:
Limited:
• Sealed: Get six boosters packs worth of cards and make a deck. Typically the prerelease format.
• Draft: Each player gets three boosters and drafts them, then makes a deck from their pool of drafted cards.
Constructed:
• Standard: Only uses the most recent sets of cards. Expensive to keep up with, but also the easiest to get into and the one with most support from wotc.
• Frontier: Newly launched, uses cards from Magic 2015 and onwards. Non-rotating.
• Modern: Uses cards from 8th edition and onwards, also non-rotating. Created because of the issues regarding Legacy and the reserved list.
• Legacy and Vintage: The true eternal formats. You won't find too many people playing these because of the cost.
there's also some niche ones like paper, pauper, canadian highlander, etc
Casual:
• Commander: Easily the biggest casual format. Kind of hard to sum up, but basically it's a multiplayer format where you build a 100 card singleton deck around a legendary creature that you (to some extent) always can cast.
• Cube: Assemble a collection of cards that you then draft with friends. Make your own draft environment, basically.

If you want to check out standard, download Arena and try it out. If you want to try commander, grab a precon and play around with it at an LGS. If you want to try sealed, join a prerelease, they're supposed to be friendly to new players.

To answer your thread question: I don't. But if I were to, I'd probably do it by name.

Commander is probably the best way to get use out of your old cards, as pretty much anything can be played there, regardless of when it was printed. But finding out what people in your area are playing is a really good idea.

I appreciate all of the responses. I don’t know the sets that well (the symbols on the middle right of the card) mean nothing to me right now because I haven’t played in so long. I’m going by my local hobby store and I’m gonna talk to them and see what they suggest. I’m itching to play so I downloaded magic 2015 for Xbox. I can’t play MTG Arena because I have a Mac. I still was able to get the rust off and brush myself up on the terminology.

The one thing for me is that I’m on a budget and I’m going to buy some cards so I can play in a tournament but I don’t want my old cards to go to waste.

Thanks everyone for your help I’ll update soon enough on what I decide to do. I can’t be the only one with this level of OCD lol.

If you decide you want to see when your cards came out in this could be useful.
https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Template:List_of_Magic_sets

Usually whatever the newest couple of sets are I keep in their own boxes sorted by color, just because those are the cards that I am most likely to decide that I want to do something with. Then when they have started getting old I will sort them into the rest of my cards which are color>cmc>type>alphabetical. For a long time it was just color>cmc but it was staring to take up too many boxes so I have been doing more sorting while getting rid of everything I have more than 4 of.

Thanks that is useful. I’ve also been using the magic video game when putting together a deck (just to refamiliarize myself) it shows how much mana you need depending on how many of each color you have. I know 1-2 is ideal but if I decided to use a gold card or something that’s multicolored it’ll let me know what’s appropriate.

I have gotten pretty much up to speed except some terminology that they use on the cards. That just comes with practice but just over the last two weeks reorganizing and building decks and playing magic on Xbox I have gotten comfortable enough that I really want to play. I just don’t feel like paying any money to do it, especially with the booster drafts and formats like that. Gotta admit I feel like kind of a child playing again.

Wait, you can sort your cards? I have 1) My EDH deck and 2) everything else