Sharpness and color accuracy

Art should be crisp at normal viewing distance, with text that's actually legible, not soft or blurry from being stretched past what the source image can support. Colors should match what's on screen — not washed out, not oversaturated to compensate for a cheap printer.

Real cardstock weight, not just a printed sheet

A card that feels floppy or thin doesn't hold up in a sleeve or a deck box. Weight and stiffness come from the core material a card is built on, not just the paper it's printed on — foil cards, for example, get mounted to a 199gsm core specifically so they have real substance in hand.

A finish that matches the card, front and back

Fronts should match the intended look — flat matte for a standard card, genuine holographic shine for foil, not a laminate sheen trying to fake it. Backs matter just as much: an anti-reflective, semi-gloss back stays legible under table lighting instead of glaring back at whoever's reading it.

Curing time before assembly

This is the step that's invisible in a finished card but shows up fast if it's skipped. A print that gets laminated and assembled before it's fully cured and dried can trap moisture, discolor, or peel later. A full 24-hour cure before assembly is what prevents that.

Precise, consistent cutting

Hand die-cutting each card individually, rather than mass-guillotining a stack, is what keeps corners and edges consistent card to card — which matters more than it sounds like once a card is actually sitting in a sleeve next to real cards.

Why this is worth knowing even if you're not ordering from ProxyLair

These are the same standards every card coming out of ProxyLair is held to — see the full Process page for exactly how that plays out step by step. But they're also just a useful checklist for evaluating any proxy, from anyone.

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