Printing high quality images on cardstock

[Fudoh]

The bizhub is a nice machine. The printing quality is very close to offset (but to be fair you get the same quality from the $300 Konica color lasers, just at a much higher price per sheet). The different to the home machines is that you will be able to feed paper or cardboard stock up to 350g/m² (you have to convert that your US measurement system). That should be pretty close to the original cards, if you chose a cardboard type which is coated on on side only. Cardboard which is coated on both sides tends to lose volume. Uncoated cardboard has higher volume at the same weight.

[Fudoh]

Those might smear I think, but I think if I let them dry, I'm guessing they might be OK.

laser prints do not smear. Never.

I could go with uncoated to avoid smearing, but I would lose the glossiness. I could always coat the printed product with something to simulate the surface of MTG cards, but then I have to worry about an even application.

yeah, you can either use a glossy spray or a foil lamination system.

f I brought in an MTG card to a place the sells cardstock, along with the measurement you provided, what are my chances on getting help picking out something appropriate?

depends on the store. I have no idea how good these are in the US. They're brilliant over here.

When creating your templates, don't forget to add a few mm to each side for cutting. Especially with double sided laser prints, there's always a little difference in positioning from one side to the other.

[Fudoh]

A die for punching machine is rather expensive.

But I'm just wondering about resolution and color settings. Any advice on that or general software points I should keep in mind? I'll probably be using Photoshop Elements to start.

a) use vectorized graphic / fonts / elements whereever possible
b) CMYK instead of RGB
c) don't overdo the resolution, 300dpi is enough for raster images on color lasers
d) create a VALID pdf from your data
e) don't use Photoshop to create a PDF, but print into a distilling sofware like Acrobat Pro.