What Are Card Sleeves, and Why Do You Need Them?

Have you ever noticed how many boardgames use cards? Some are actually entirely based on cards and they may include hundreds of cards. Cards also have their very own type of game in the form of Trading Card Games and Collectible Card Games.

Why card games are so popular? Well, there are a lot of reasons including the fact that they are very cost and storage effective, they have more than enough space to deliver both great artwork and useful game information while also be usually quite suitable for all ages. However, cards can also be easily damaged by shuffling them and they can get dirty by handling them, in particular during a game night where snacks and drinks are on the table. The good news is that protecting your cards is also very easy and the key word to learn is “Card Sleeves”.

What are card Sleeves?

In essence, Card Sleeves (or Deck protector sleeves) are small sheaths of plastic that hold a card. The very first deck protector sleeve was the “Top Loader” and it was created in the 50s mainly to protect the collectible sport cards from wear and tear. Made of rigid plastic, the top-loader is still used for protecting single valuable cards in your collection or during shipment and transportation. However, the top-loader is not suitable to be used for Trading Card Games which require sleeves that are flexible enough to shuffle the deck repeatedly while also be strong enough to still provide long term protection to the cards.

Protecting your deck is very important in Trading Card Games but not just because your cards can be quite rare and valuable. In fact, the main reason players want to protect their cards is because scratches and other damages can potentially make easy to identify some cards among those in the deck so that damage cards are deemed unusable in a tournament. Nothing is worse than having a strong and quite expensive deck and not been able to use your best cards....

For these reasons, a more flexible type of card sleeve was invented in the 90s following the rise in popularity of Magic: The Gathering and other similar TCGs. Considering how successful these type of games have been in the last 30 years, a lot of brands joined the race to design the best sleeves to protect trading cards and we now have a huge selection of different products that can fit all possible needs. However, choosing which sleeve brand or product fits better your needs (and wallet) is not a trivial task but we can surely provide some guidance to help.

First things first: Should you sleeve your cards?

Before purchasing any card sleeve I think you should always consider if sleeving your cards is a sensible choice. For example, if you are playing a TCG like Pokemon or Disney Lorcana, sleeving your cards is a must as it will prevent your cards to be damaged by the constant shuffling required by these games. As you know better then me, all the best cards in any TCG are usually quite rare and they can get very valuable thus you don't want to tear your £100 card after just a few games. Most important, any damaged card is considered “marked” as it can be easily recognized in the deck thus can not be played in competitive events. That's why having your cards sleeved is so important as you will not only protect their value but also ensure they can follow you in any challenge you want to face.  

When it comes to boardgames, you may need to take different factors into consideration. The two most important are usually the value of the boardgame and the number of cards and different sizes they come with. Some boardgames, for example, come with so many cards of different size that sleeving all of them can just cost as much as buying a new boardgame when and if the cards will get too damaged. In other cases, games may be so difficult to find that ensuring their components will last longer can be a good investment to protect the value of the games themselves. Another important aspect to consider is if sleeved cards will fit into the box of your boardgame as not all of them are designed to hold sleeved cards.

How many type of sleeves are there?

Considering that flexible card sleeve were primarily designed to protect collectible Cards, we will focus this section mainly on TCG games. All the considerations we will discuss below can be applied also to boardgames but it is clear that protecting your super valuable and rare TCG cards is where card sleeves shine the most.

In order to decide which product is best for you, I think you should consider a few characteristics starting from the thickness of the sleeve. As obvious as it can be, the thicker the sleeve, the higher the resistance to wear and tear damage they offer. The most commonly used sleeves for TCG have a thickness of 120 microns and they usually come with a clear side while the other one is coloured. Dragon shield is one of the most known and used brand across all different TCGs as it offers a large variety of products that can easily match all your needs.

Sleeves with a thickness of 40-90 microns can still be suitable to protect your cards but they may break easily thus having a few spares can be useful. However, these flexible sleeves can actually be used to protect your cards even more by double or even triple sleeving your cards. In this case your card is first enveloped by a perfect sleeve (a sleeve exactly the size of the card) and then by a standard sleeve providing two layers of protection of more than 120 microns. Moreover, if the opening of the inner sleeve is oriented to be at the bottom of the external one the dust and dirt will never risk to reach your precious cards. Just for the records, there are also other-sleeves that can fit around the standard ones to double sleeve them or to even triple sleeve your cards if you also use a inner sleeve. Personally, triple sleeving is a bit too much but we will discuss outer shells a bit later.

The second aspects I usually consider are size and colour. The very important aspect to know about sleeves is that the size listed on the label of the sleeve package is almost always the size of the size of the cards that FIT into the sleeves. This important detail is designed to help players to pick the right sleeves by measuring the cards. In most of the cases, the sleeve description usually list the most common games that can use that sleeve size or a clear gaming convention like for example Standard size (Pokemon, Disney Lorcana and Magic: The Gathering size) or Japanese size (Yu-Gi-Oh! size). We already mentioned the Inner or Perfect fit sleeves and the Outer sleeves as they are very particular type of sleeves.

In terms of colours, it is quite obvious that a card sleeve should always have one side completely clear to allow to read the card inside. In terms of gameplay, the other side of the sleeve should be mono-colour and fully not-see through. This two characteristics are very important as they are required in a lot of official events and tournaments in order to ensure people can not identify their cards in the deck and each match is fair. Among the options, I strongly recommend to always pick Matte sleeve as they reduce the glare and they tend to resist much better to scratches and shuffling damages. Some sleeves also have a small texture on them that is designed to make easier to pick them up from the playing mats. I think having or not having a texture on your sleeve really depends on your personal preference as I used both types without any issue. Again the main recommendation is to not pick a pattern/texture can be easily damaged making your sleeves not suitable for tournaments.

Another aspect that really depends on your preferences is to have themed sleeves with a nice artwork on the back. I personally love these type of sleeves and I tend to match the artwork with the archetype or the play-style of the deck I am using. However, the artwork on these sleeves may get damaged by the continuous shuffling and I noticed that also the borders of these sleeves are more subject to damages than the non-themed ones. Most important, changing a damaged themed sleeve may not be always cheap as they come in fixed size packages and you may not always have just a few spare ones. To avoid this issues, you should always consider to double sleeve the themed ones into full clear other sleeves. This option increase a lot of the protection to your cards and it also protect your sleeves so you can enjoy their artwork a lot longer.  

How to pick the best Cards Sleeves

Now that you know everything about all the different type of sleeves, it is time to think which sleeve to pick to protect all your beloved cards. Using “Card sleeves” as a keyword can be a good start but then you will need a way to narrow down the almost 1000 different products we can get on Magic Madhouse shop for example.

The first refinement to this search can be to look only for the sleeves in the size you need. “Pokemon Sleeves” or “Yu-Gi-Oh! Sleeves” or “Disney Lorcana Sleeves” will however only get you the themed ones and these may not be the generic ones you are looking for. Better result can be obtained using the common designation for the sleeve size. “Standard sleeves” will surely get you suitable products for Disney Lorcana, Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering and Digimon while “Japanese sleeves” will be suitable to retrieve sleeves for Yu-Gi-Oh!. Just a note to remind that among the results you will likely also have some inner/perfect fit sleeves. The outer-sleeves will need to be searched specifically as they do not usually come up with other searches.

Alternatively, you can look for a brand you used before (i.e. Dragon Shield) or a specific size (if you are looking for boardgames). In this last case, always check the way the dimensions are written on the site you are using by running a more general search. On Magic Madhouse, for example, the sleeve size is written as @@mm x @@mm where the first number is always the width of the sleeve

Now that you have narrowed down your research consistently, the main factors we discussed previously should help finding the right sleeve for you. One last aspect we haven't discussed yet is how to find the best deals. The best approach is always to check the price per pack with respect of the amount of sleeves they provide as pack size can vary substantially from one brand to another. Last but not least always consider to not buy the exact number of sleeves you need but to have a few spares in case any of them get damaged by the use.

When buying cards sleeves for my TGC I tend to buy enough sleeves to last for a number of sets and I usually prefer to buy always the same type of sleeves. This way, I can make sure all my cards will be protected as needed with plenty of sleeves to spare. Most important, buying multiple packs at the same time ensure I can benefit from the free-shipping on Magic Madhouse shop that is quite a good deal considering how cheap some sleeve can be on our site. Don't also forget that sleeves go periodically on sale and that there is a easy to navigate “Sale” section on the TCG accessories to find them.