Do you have a card gamer in the family, and never know what to buy them as gifts on special occasions? With holiday season approaching, let’s take a look at our recommendations for the best gifts for all types and ages of card gamer!
For New Players
If you have a fan of card games who’s only just starting out, or maybe looking to learn a new game (or two!), then we can highly recommend picking up beginner sets for a variety of different games. These make great entry points for players of any age, and they’re the perfect place to start when learning a new game, as well as making sure your card game fan enjoys the experience before sinking too much time or money into it!
Magic: The Gathering Foundations Beginner Box
The first and still one of the biggest trading card games ever, Magic: The Gathering can be extremely intimidating to newcomers. The Foundations Beginner Box contains enough cards to experiment with over multiple games with several players, and even allows for your new gamer to try out deckbuilding too. Most importantly, the set features a “scripted” game which takes new players through a round of Magic: The Gathering, step by step, making it feel far more welcoming, and helping to prove why its popularity has endured for more than three decades. Players can go beyond the initial box and dive into the special Foundations booster packs whenever they’re ready too, expanding their collection and trying out new cards as their confidence grows.
Pokémon Battle Academy
Three decks, special promo cards, a board, all the tokens you need and a step by step tutorial can all be found in the Pokémon Battle Academy set, which is the absolute best way to get new players involved in Pokémon, and makes for a great gift too! With Pokémon being another game, like Magic: The Gathering, which has been around since the 90s, which has endured in popularity, it can still be a little daunting to get involved, but the Battle Academy set makes it really easy to pick up and play.
Disney Lorcana Gateway
One of the newest trading card games out there, Disney Lorcana has built itself quite a following since launching in 2023. It’s an accessible game that’s easy enough for Disney Fans of any age to pick up and play, but like most trading card games it can still seem intimidating to absolute newcomers. So the Gateway is a perfect way to learn in a step by step way. Players will start with a small number of cards and “unlock” more as they learn each game concept, with the full game having been explained once the final “gate” is opened. With handy playmats, tokens and other accessories alongside the cards themselves, this is an excellent set for Disney fans and younger players who are just getting interested in card games.
Star Wars Unlimited: Intro Battle Hoth
The Intro Battle Hoth set for Star Wars Unlimited features a player board with helpful rules reminders, as well as two decks, perfectly balanced against each other, for two players to learn and play the superb, Star Wars-themed trading card game. It’s a brilliant introduction to one of the best new TCGs to have landed in recent years.
Riftbound: Proving Grounds
The League of Legends trading card game, Riftbound, is the new kid on the block. Launched in late 2025, it’s still new, but has caused quite a stir amongst card gamers already. Proving Grounds is the perfect starting point for new players who want to learn the Riftbound ropes. It provides up to 4 players with their own deck, board and even cute little character tokens for tracking their points. The set even has exclusive cards, oversized battlefield cards and easy to learn rules and reminders printed on each player board. If you have a League of Legends fan in your life and they want to get in on the hottest new card game available, Proving Grounds is a fantastic gift for them!
For Experienced Card Game Fans
For players who are already heavily invested in a single game or two, there’s no point in buying them a new beginner set for a new game. You also won’t want to buy them cards they won’t need, want or use. So what should you get for an experienced card game player? Well, accessories are always welcome, and always needed. You can buy just about any binder, sleeves, deck box or play mat, and it’ll almost certainly be used and appreciated. So which do we recommend? Let’s take a look!
Vault X Premium eXo-Tec Binders
One thing that card game fans always need, whether they buy cards to play, collect or display, are safe, secure and sturdy binders to hold their most cherished cards. In our experience, Vault X have the most consistently reliable, high quality binders on the market, and they’re reasonably priced too. Fully featured, made by card game fans for card game fans, whenever we’ve reviewed Vault X binders we’ve been very impressed. With a range of sizes and a huge variety of colors to suit all tastes and preferences, Vault X binders are a great, thoughtful gift for card gaming fans. You can also use CARDGAMER10 at checkout, for a 10% discount off your first order at Vault X!
Quiver Apollo Card Sleeves
Whether handling cards during play, or storing them (in binders or boxes), every fan of TCGs will very quickly succumb to sleeving just about all of the cards in their collection. Though cheaper, thinner sleeves (known as “penny sleeves” to fans) will often be more practical and cost effective for common and low value cards, for cards being repeatedly used or of much higher value will need better protection. In our experience, after testing many brands, the Apollo sleeves by Quiver are the best in terms of cost and quality. They’ll fit standard sized cards, which means they’re suitable for just about any TCG (Yu-Gi-Oh! remains an outlier in terms of card size, so buy these instead for a Yu-Gi-Oh! fan) too.
Premium Custom Tokens
Our friends at Buy The Same Token make the most beautiful accessories for just about every trading card game on the market. Their tokens and other accessories don’t just look incredible (not to mention highly thematic to the game they’re designed for), but they assist players on each side with visual clarity that you don’t often get with the cheap, flimsy cardboard accessories you’ll find in official starter decks and other packs. You can use the code GAMERGEEK-5 to get 5% off your order too!
Vault X Exo-Tec Sideloading Deck Box 100+
We’re back to Vault X again for our favorite deck boxes; just like the Vault X binders, these feature packed deck boxes are thoughtfully designed with serious card gamers in mind, and we were very impressed with their quality, especially given their reasonable price. You can get one even cheaper, using the button above to get 10% off your entire first order at Vault X, so you can stock up on gifts for yourself and any other card gaming friends or family too!
Paramint Play Mats
See the beautiful backdrop to this photo of the Super Meow game box? That’s an MTG play mat from Paramint, who specialize in custom designs with gorgeous artwork. Their mats are fantastic quality, and they have countless designs to choose from, some with play zones for a variety of different games, others just with wonderful artwork that really add some flair to the tabletop of any card gamer when in use. The important thing for card gamers is that they play on a durable, protective and non-slip surface; Paramint play mats are absolutely perfect as gifts for any fan of card games, especially as they’re beautifully packaged and thoughtfully designed. Online stores are rife with cheap looking mats from less than reputable companies, but Paramint are definitely a brand we can personally attest to being trustworthy, as we have many of their play mats in our collection!
Check out our picks for the best deck boxes, and our review of an essential product for MTG players, RulesDeck!
