Trading Card Sleeves

Premium quality sleeves like Dragon Shield Matte Sleeves are great for decks that are being played. Penny sleeves like Ultra Pro Soft Penny Sleeves are great for bulk storage. Toploaders like Ultra Pro Toploaders for extra protection and are great for highly valuable cards and for posting cards.

Some card sleeves have a tighter fit than others. Soft penny sleeves usually have a very loose fit, whereas more premium card sleeves, such as Dragon Shields, have a tighter fit. Premium card sleeves should be tight enough that the card cannot easily fall out of the sleeve but not tight enough that it causes the card to bend while in the sleeve. If it does bend, it suggests that the card sleeve is not the correct size.

Sleeved cards become much easier to shuffle due to the smooth card sleeve material. It makes the cards much more accessible to slide between each other; hence, they can quickly be shuffled by weaving. Split the deck into roughly two halves to weave shuffle a sleeved deck. Loosely holding one half of the deck, insert the other half between the spaces of the cards. Repeat this multiple times until the deck is sufficiently shuffled. In competitive TCG play, a deck generally must be weave shuffled a minimum of seven times before being considered shuffled and ready for play.

Japanese card sleeves are designed for most Japanese trading card games such as Yu-Gi-Oh, Cardfight Vanguard and Weiss Schwarz. Japanese trading card games are smaller than the standard size of TCGs. Despite Pokemon TCG and all Bandai TCGs (One Piece Card Game, Digimon Card Game, Dragon Ball Super Card Game, etc.) being from Japan, they do not use Japanese sized card sleeves and use standard sized card sleeves instead.

While it’s not necessary to sleeve every single trading card you own, it is worth sleeving any cards and decks that you play with the most. These cards are the most likely to gain wear and tear from regular use. I recommend using premium card sleeves, such as Dragon Shield Matte Sleeves, to protect these. Bulk cards do not need to be sleeved, though if you wish to sleeve them, you can use a cheaper card sleeve instead, such as Ultra Pro Soft Penny Sleeves. If a card is of very high value and needs extra protection, I would advise storing it in a toploader, such as the Ultra Pro Toploaders.

Toploaders are great for storing high value cards, giving unparalleled protection. I would highly suggest using toploaders, like Ultra Pro Toploaders, for any part of your collection that is valuable to you. However, it might be overkill to use toploaders for your whole collection, as they are relatively expensive and bulky. Toploaders cannot generally be used for cards that are being played as part of a deck.

Double sleeving your cards provides an extra layer of protection, which generally makes the sleeved card near waterproof. I would suggest double sleeving cards which are being played as part of a deck that have a particularly high value. Great sleeves for these would be Dragon Shield Matte Sleeves and Perfect Fit Inner Sleeves.

It would be overkill to double sleeve every card you own, as cheap, bulk cards would not justify the cost of the sleeves.

Standard sized sleeves are meant to fit cards which are 63.5 x 88 mm.

Japanese sized sleeves are meant to fit 59 x 86 mm cards.

Penny sleeves are great for protecting cards on a budget. They generally cost 1p per sleeve, though they use a thin material that might be unsuitable for cards regularly being played with due to their loose fit. They are most suitable for bulk storage of cards.