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Your First Scan

Once your scanning machine is registered and shows as online, you're ready to scan your first cards.

Start a scan session​

  1. From your Home dashboard, select Start Scanning (or open Inventorize → Scans in the sidebar and select Start New Scan).
  2. Work through the four-step setup wizard:
    1. Pick scanner — choose which online machine to use (up to 3 shown at once; offline machines can't be selected).
    2. Choose plan — pick a usage-based plan (a fixed number of scans) or a time-based plan (unlimited scans for a set period). See Plans & Shopping if you don't have one yet.
    3. Set scan options — choose the TCG you're scanning, plus upside-down detection, foil detection mode, language, price source, and whether to scan your whole collection or restrict to one set.
    4. Confirm — review your choices and select Start Scan.
  3. Place cards on the scanning tray. The machine captures each card image and uploads it automatically — you don't need to do anything else in the app while it runs.

The scan detail page shows live machine status while scanning, with Pause, Resume, and End controls, plus on-screen guidance if a card gets stuck or two cards feed through at once.

Reviewing results​

Every scanned card starts out Pending review. TCG Inventory automatically tries to match each one against the card database:

  • Detected cards have a confident match and can be approved with one click (or all at once with Auto-approve detected).
  • Undetected cards need a manual link — search the database yourself and confirm the correct card, or delete the card if it was a misread.

Once every card in the scan is approved, you move on to filing them into a box or deck section — see Starting & Reviewing a Scan for the full step-by-step workflow, and How Scanning Works for the technical pipeline behind the scenes.