If you play Magic long enough, you eventually fall down a rabbit hole about card stock.
Why do real MTG cards feel so specific in the hand? Why do some proxy cards come close, but still feel a bit off on the table? Why do some packs have a slightly different texture or thickness than others?
In this article I’ll break down what we know about MTG cardstock: what it’s made of, the card stock weight and thickness, who makes it, who prints it, and how it’s coated. Some details are locked up by Wizards, but there’s enough info from the printing world and the MTG community to build a clear picture of what’s going on under the art.
What MTG Cardstock Actually Is (and why it’s called Corona)
Magic cards are not printed on normal card or random cardboard. MTG cards use a specialty playing card stock designed for high-end games.
The traditional MTG card stock is usually called Corona in printing circles. That doesn’t mean it’s just any Corona-branded paper you can buy by the pack. We’re talking about a specific, premium playing card board used for Magic cards and other trading card games.
The structure is a three-layer sandwich:
- A front paper layer that holds the printed card face and art
- An opaque colored core in the center (typically blue)
- A back paper layer for the card back
This “blue core” is important. It cuts down on light passing through the card. If you shine a strong light or UV light behind real MTG cards, you can’t easily see the art or mana cost in detail. That’s a big deal for valuable cards in competitive play. It helps keep real cards from being see-through or “marked” by thickness differences.
So when people online say “MTG cardstock is Corona,” they usually mean this multi-layer, blue-core playing card stock that only a few mills produce for the trading card world.
Size, Thickness, GSM, and Card Stock Weight
Let’s talk about numbers, because that’s where a lot of online users get serious.
A typical non-foil Magic card has:
- Size: 2.5 x 3.5 inch (about 63 x 88 mm)
- Thickness: about 0.012 inch (roughly 0.305 mm)
- Card stock weight: commonly in the 280–320 gsm range (grams per square meter)
That thickness is often described as 12 pt board in printing terms. It’s thicker and stiffer than cheap office cardstock, but not so thick that decks become bricks when sleeved.
In practice, MTG cards:
- Feel a bit thicker and more solid than 250 gsm business card stock
- Are flexible enough to riffle shuffle without creasing right away
- Stack evenly so a whole deck of cards feels consistent in height and weight
If you’re trying to match real MTG cards for your own proxy deck, you’re usually aiming for:
- Blue or black core playing card board around 300 gsm
- ≈0.3 mm thickness
- A smooth finish that isn’t ultra-glossy toy plastic, but also not plain uncoated paper
That combo is the sweet spot where cards feel right in the world of Magic and other card games.
Who Makes the Card Stock, and Where Is It Produced?
Wizards doesn’t run its own paper mills. MTG cardstock comes from specialized manufacturers that make playing card board by the square meter for big clients.
Industry chatter and historic MTG card stock writeups point to a small group of mills that make Corona-type stock, including:
- Arjowiggins in France
- Kohler in Germany
- US Playing Card Company in the USA (for their own decks and some premium stock)
The key point: the exact MTG-grade Corona stock is not standard retail stock. You can’t just go online, add a bunch of sheets to your cart, and accept a shipment for a few dollars per sheet. This is contract-only material sold to major printers, often in large pallets or rolls instead of little packs.
That’s part of why it’s hard for random printing services or home inkjet printer setups to perfectly imitate real MTG cards. The standard stock in the open market is usually “close but not quite” in thickness, stiffness, or finish.
Who Prints Magic Cards?
Once the card stock is made, it has to be printed, coated, and cut. That’s where companies like Cartamundi come in.
Cartamundi is one of the biggest playing card and board game manufacturers in the world. They openly list Magic: The Gathering as one of the brands they produce, along with other famous games. Wizards has also used additional printing partners over the years for different regions and products.
So the flow is roughly:
- Corona-style MTG cardstock is produced in a few mills.
- Large card printers like Cartamundi buy that stock and keep it in their plants.
- They handle printing, coating, cutting, and packing of MTG cards for Wizards.
This is why MTG cards from different regions can feel slightly different. The base stock is similar, but environmental factors, press lines, and coatings can vary, so you get small differences in how cards feel and how the art and ink look.
How MTG Cards Are Printed: From Sheets to Decks
Now let’s look at the process. For MTG cards, we’re not talking about home inkjet printers. We’re talking industrial offset printing on big sheets of card stock.
Here’s the simplified process:
- Big sheets of Corona card stock (often a whole sheet of many cards) are loaded into an offset press.
- The card art is separated into CMYK color plates: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
- Printers often use an extra black plate specifically for rules text and borders, which helps with print quality and sharp text.
- The sheets are printed, dried, and sometimes conditioned so they don’t curl or warp.
- A protective coating is applied (we’ll cover that next).
- The coated sheets are cut into individual cards, often with steel rule dies, and then corner-rounded.
- Cards are collated, checked, and packed into boosters and products.
Compared to printing your own MTG proxies at home, this is a completely different scale. You’re talking about many cards on one sheet, highly repeatable color control, and specialized finishing equipment.
Coatings, Smooth Finish, and Why Cards Feel the Way They Do
Raw card stock alone won’t give you the typical “Magic feel.” That comes from the coating and the finishing process on top of the paper and ink.
Common types of coatings for playing cards and trading card games include:
- Aqueous coating – a water-based coating, quick to dry, often used on mass-market card games
- UV coating – cured under UV light, can produce a glossier and more durable surface
- Varnish – a general category of clear protective finishes that can be gloss, satin, or matte
Many high-end card stocks also include a very thin plastic laminate layer or special surface treatment. On real MTG cards, the result is a smooth finish that feels slick enough to shuffle, but not like cheap plastic.
This coating affects:
- How easily cards slide past each other in a sleeve
- How well the image quality holds up when cards rub together
- How much dirt, sweat, and table grime they can handle before looking rough
- How light reflects off the surface when you tilt cards under a lamp or UV light
Foil MTG cards add another layer of complexity. Foils use a metallic film or extra layers that change thickness and stiffness compared to non-foil standard stock. That’s why foil MTG cards sometimes curl or behave differently in a deck or sleeve.
MTG Cardstock vs Proxy Cards and Home Printing
If you’re reading this because you want to create your own proxy cards or MTG proxies, here’s the honest part: matching real MTG cards exactly is hard.
Typical problems when using generic cardstock and a home or office printer:
- Weight: Many “cardstock” packs at office stores are around 200–230 gsm. That’s lighter than real MTG card stock weight. Cards feel thin and flimsy.
- Thickness: Even if the gsm seems close, the actual thickness in mm or inch can differ. Cards might be too thin or too thick, especially once sleeved with real cards.
- Core: Most office stock has no blue or black core, so under strong light, the card is more transparent than a real MTG card.
- Surface: Cheap paper has a simple coated or uncoated surface. It won’t have the same shuffle feel or durability as a Corona-based playing card stock.
- Ink and printer: Consumer inkjet printers lay down a lot of ink and moisture. That can soften the paper fibers, create banding in the art, and change the way sheets curl as they dry.
More serious proxy makers often step up to:
- 280–330 gsm blue or black core playing card stock sold by specialty suppliers
- Careful cut work with good trimmers or corner punches to match the exact size and corners of real cards
- Controlled printing (sometimes on laser printers) to keep ink load and image quality more stable
- Optional spray coats or varnish to get a smoother feel on the surface
Even then, you might only get “pretty good” rather than perfect. In a deck with real cards, your proxies may still feel a bit different in a sleeve. For kitchen table Magic, that’s usually fine, especially when you want to test new decks or protect premium, valuable cards by keeping them in a binder.
But no matter how good your proxies are, you should not sell them as real cards or mislead anyone about what they are. The community, Wizards, and the rest of the market take that seriously.
Why Card Stock Details Matter for Real Play
For casual players, all this talk about gsm, Corona stock, and laminates might sound like too much. But when you live and breathe Magic, MTG cardstock matters more than it seems.
It affects:
- How a deck feels when you shuffle, cut, and fan it out on the table
- How long your cards last before edges start to fuzz
- How easy it is to spot marked or warped cards in a high-stakes game
- How easy it is for judges and players to trust that a deck of real cards behaves as it should
When Wizards chooses stock, coatings, and printers, they’re balancing print quality, manufacturing cost, and how the cards hold up in the real world. They also want to reduce the ability of counterfeiters to perfectly copy all the tiny details of genuine MTG cards.
So if you’re just curious, that’s the story behind the stuff in your hand. If you’re trying to build your own proxy deck that feels closer to the real thing, this gives you concrete targets: gsm range, thickness, blue or black core, and a smooth, durable finish.
Quick Summary
Here’s the short version:
- Magic cards use a multi-layer Corona playing card stock with a colored (usually blue) core, not basic cardboard.
- Real MTG card stock is roughly 280–320 gsm, around 0.012 inch (≈0.3 mm) thick, with a smooth, coated surface.
- The stock is made by a small number of mills and printed by large card manufacturers like Cartamundi under contract with Wizards.
- Coatings (aqueous, UV, varnish, sometimes laminate) give real MTG cards their shuffle feel and help preserve image quality.
- For MTG proxies, you want at least blue/black core board, around 300 gsm and 0.3 mm, plus decent printing and cutting, to get close to real MTG cards in sleeves.
That’s the rabbit hole of MTG cardstock in a nutshell. The rest is just playing the game.
