Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Recommend Card Sleeves

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Karlos The Jackal

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First off I want to apologise in advance if this topic is in the wrong place, I wasn't sure where best to start it & guessed this would be the most appropriate place.

I'm after some new Deck sleeves, At the moment I'm using some really poor clear ones that always seam to fall apart (They were cheep off eBay so I wasnt expecting much)

So what is the best deck sleeves to go for? Is there a recommended brand or type? I know I would prefer not to have clear ones but I would rather have what's best & protects my cards the best rather then go for looks.

(On a side not, As I have a £20 Amazon Gift card burning a hole in my pocket any Links back to there would be appreciated!) :)

Delivered by Western Union in the rain after 70 Years
 
There are a few brands that I know of, and each has their pros and cons.

Dragon Shields are well built, don't split easily, and reasonably inexpensive. But they can get grimy and sticky after a lot of play.

Ultra Pros are a little less solidly built. They can split more easily than Shields, and I've had problems recently with them being unevenly cut. But they don't seem to get as grimy as Shields.

Max Protection are awful. Or, at least, they were when I last saw them. A guy bought a pack of 80 for a tournament, and 24 of them split before the 4th round.

I've heard a lot of good things about KMC Player's Choice, but I haven't used them personally, so I really don't know.

And if you can find Japanese Pokemon sleeves, those are very, very good. Just be careful with them, as they are rather expensive.
 
Ultra Pro Pro Matte and Dragon shield for me though the shields can be rather reflective so I use the pro matte in tournaments for Pokémon

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk
 
KMC Mat Black's are the best sleeves to get. They only last about as long as Ultra-Pros before griming up, but they are perfectly cut, shuffle beautifully, and look remarkable. Dragonshields will last longer, but they tend to fog and make the cards hard to read. Ultra-Pros are awful: they split and bend and tear and fog and dull. They basically have all of the cons. Ultra-Pro Pro Mattes are okay, but still not preferable.
 
Woh, Thanks for all the information guys!

So basically avoid Ultra Pro's & i should be alright. So KMC's seam to be the best of the bunch then, think we have a winner :)

Thank you again!

Delivered by Western Union in the rain after 70 Years
 
I have the best experience with Dragonshields. If you take a little bit care, a 100-sleeves pack can be used for a very long time.
Ultra Pro are generally blegh. They come in 50-packs, and if you buy the same color, you might not have the same color.
And KMC are even worse. I bought once a 2x40 packs just to notice that the colors of the sleeves of the two subpacks in the same pack were shimmering differently, after you sleeved cards into them --> there went 80 sleeves in the trash...
 
Glumanda said:
I have the best experience with Dragonshields. If you take a little bit care, a 100-sleeves pack can be used for a very long time.
Ultra Pro are generally blegh. They come in 50-packs, and if you buy the same color, you might not have the same color.
And KMC are even worse. I bought once a 2x40 packs just to notice that the colors of the sleeves of the two subpacks in the same pack were shimmering differently, after you sleeved cards into them --> there went 80 sleeves in the trash...
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I did a bit more research myself afterwards & read that about KMC cards, also message one of the guys at my local club & he hates them & only recommends Dragons.

In the end I just went sod I & got some Ultra Pro in matt black, they don't have the best reviews but seam to be a middle of the road chouse & the cheapest out of the few I was looking at so im gonna stick with these untill I can afford some of the Japanese sleeves :)

Delivered by Western Union in the rain after 70 Years
 
Ultra Pros are fine unless you're brutal with card sleeves. (I've only split about 3 in tournaments ever, and I rarely replace sleeves unless they break.) Come to think of it, I think one or two of them were caused by the opponent. I can't stand the feel of other kinds of sleeves personally, and matte Ultra Pros shuffle better IMO.
 
Honestly everyone will give you different answers. I've used Ultra Pro sleeves for years, and they really are middle of the road, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I will say, try to buy the packs of 100. I bought two packs of fifty at Walmart because I wanted to re-sleeve a practice deck, and the sleeves were just barely two different sizes. I sleeved 50 cards before I realized that the other pack of sleeves ended up marking the cards.

Personal favorite right now are DragonShield. They are really, really slick when you first sleeve up a deck with them, but they do definitely get sticky with age no matter what you do.
 
If you can get them I would say professor sleeves. I have my Pokemon Cube sleeved in them and they are amazing. Ultra-Pros are good if you don't care about replacing sleeves that often as they are prone to breakage if you shuffle roughly. KMCs are the best, but pricey and difficult to find sometimes. I personally do not like Dragon Shield sleeves. They feel odd and end up sticky really quickly.
 
I am only going to talk about 3, or perhaps 4 if you count them as separate, brands.

Breaking means most likely for a sleeve to rip through vigorous shuffling

Uneven cut means most likely for 2 batches of sleeves to be cut differently. Note that each batch does not mean each single product you buy. The 100 pack ultra pros are really 2 batches of 50 sleeves. Same with the 100 pack Dragon shields.

Dirty means most likely for a sleeve to hold dirt. It could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing, depending if you want your sleeves to lose its slipperyness. The bad thing about this is if you leave one card, in its sleeve, in the open for so long, the sleeve will look different and loose.

Ultra pro solid color 50 count or 100 count. Most likely to break, least likely to get dirty.

Dragon Shield 100 count. Most likely to have uneven cut batches of sleeves. Least likely to break.

KMC 80 count/Player's Choice 60 count. Most likely to get dirty, least likely to be cut unevenly.
 
I've never seen Dragon Shields cut unevenly, while just about every tournament I've had to perform physical deck checks I've seen unevenly cut UPs.
 
bullados said:
I've never seen Dragon Shields cut unevenly, while just about every tournament I've had to perform physical deck checks I've seen unevenly cut UPs.
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Just to let you know, ultra pro shrank the size of their sleeves at some point to make a tighter fit, so what you might be seeing are players using older ultra pro sleeves mixed with newer ones.

An experiment to try is to buy 60 packs of 100 count dragon shields of the same color, and 60 packs of 50 count ultra pros of the same color. Take one sleeve from each pack, and sleeve each card for a 60 card deck, and do it again with another deck, and the other brand. You will see that Dragon shields have more uneven cuts compared to ultra pro.

Ultra pros come in packs of 50, meaning I have to use 2 packs, and the cut are even, but they are still guilty of uneven cuts, not as much as dragon shields though. One thing they are guilty of, which happened to me in 2 occasions, is that one pack of white isn't as white as another one, and a pack of light blue sleeves I bought had the bottom edge look different from another pack.

As for dragon shields, they are the most guilty of actual uneven cuts, that is, some sleeves are taller than others, but a minor difference, nothing that you could notice unless you take the deck up to your eye and look at it.

I have no data on KMC or Player's choice, as I used Yugioh sized sleeves to conclude that KMCs and Player's choice are prone to getting dust and finger grease on the sleeve, which totally marks the sleeve.

It is really down to 3 things.

Want great durability? Get Dragon Shields
Want over 9000 even cut sleeves? Get KMC or Player's choice
Want sleeves that don't attract dirt? Get Ultra Pro
 
Sign, most of those uneven packs were of UPs bought at the time of the event, in those 50-count packs. One player had to be DQ'd because of those UPs. And it's never been subtle at all. I could run my thumb along a deck, and pick out the 10 cards from the 2nd pack easily. I'm only counting new or almost-new packs in my experience. And I've seen this only with UPs, and never with Shields.
 
bullados said:
Sign, most of those uneven packs were of UPs bought at the time of the event, in those 50-count packs. One player had to be DQ'd because of those UPs. And it's never been subtle at all. I could run my thumb along a deck, and pick out the 10 cards from the 2nd pack easily. I'm only counting new or almost-new packs in my experience. And I've seen this only with UPs, and never with Shields.
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So long as nobody could tell the difference in sleeves and thus what the next card might be, it is fine. So for example, you probably should be drawing out each card rather than thumbing through each card.

I have dragon shields that are longer cut than some other packs. I would notice it if I put the deck close to my eye, but when I lay it down on the table, I would no longer able to tell which ones are longer cut, and which ones are shorter cut.

As for ultra pro, if they do have different batches of the same color look different, it really shows. 100% of my ultra pro sleeves are evenly cut so far, while I have unevenly cut dragon shields. I have 2 cases where when I draw out each card, I know which 10 cards used different sleeves. The rest were not an issue.

I also heard a lot of bad reputation on dragon shields when it comes to evenly cut sleeves from some MTG forums as well.

Just making sure, how big of a difference are you talking about? So far all my ultra pros are evenly cut, but are prone to other errors, such as how the bottom of the sleeve comes together and the shade of white on one sleeve compared to another. Also, how often is it happening? Are you sure that if it is happening more than once, you aren't examining the same sets of sleeves? For example, let's say there are 3 packs of ultra pros, and one is not like the other 2. This means that 2 decks will have 10 cards that look different because both decks drew from the same pack of ultra pros that look different from the others.

The best way to really find out which brand has miscut sleeves is to sleeve each card using the same brand but all from different packs of sleeves, but as Sweet Brown says, "nobody got time for that!"
 
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Ultra pro is okay in my opinion, but I only used ultra pro. They are pretty good collector wise, but for shuffling? Not really. They are slightly rough for shuffling the 60 card deck in the beginning. As the game gets later in, shuffling is a breeze. If you use a deck that rarely mulligans, I recommend ultra pro. They do split eventually though.
 
ExoByte said:
I'm biased, but there are some good sleeves in the Elite Trainer Box.

Most people on here seem to agree.
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Why don't TPCi make sleeves where the back of the sleeve is exactly the same as the pokemon card back, and the on the other side, rather being silver, or white, or black, make it yellow?

It would be like playing with unprotected protected pokemon cards.
 
signofzeta said:
Just making sure, how big of a difference are you talking about?
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Some of them have been pretty subtle, and I'd only notice by thumbing along the side.

Other times, it's been so bad that I could spot it halfway across a table. Think 2mm or more.

And this happens whether it's been 50s or 100 packs.

I've gotten 2 100-packs of Shields, and deck checked probably dozens to hundreds of decks sleeved in Shields, and I've never seen them miscut.

Let's not mention that I just find Shields more durable than recent UPs, even given the grime that they can build up over time.
 
bullados said:
Some of them have been pretty subtle, and I'd only notice by thumbing along the side.

Other times, it's been so bad that I could spot it halfway across a table. Think 2mm or more.

And this happens whether it's been 50s or 100 packs.

I've gotten 2 100-packs of Shields, and deck checked probably dozens to hundreds of decks sleeved in Shields, and I've never seen them miscut.

Let's not mention that I just find Shields more durable than recent UPs, even given the grime that they can build up over time.
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Are you really sure that the deck didn't contain pre 2011 ultra pro sleeves? Sometimes stores that have that one extra case of old ultra pros that they forgot to sell will try to sell that product, despite the sleeves being bigger than the new sleeves.

The old ultra pros are 67.03mm x 92.07mm. The new ultra pros are 66mm x 91mm If the sleeves are miscut by 2mm, then it is a higher chance that the deck contains a mixture of old and new ultra pro sleeves. If the 66x91 sleeves do differ, it wouldn't be by a large margin like 2mm.

Situations like these should not happen now, but there can be some stores that have the pre 2011 ultra pros laying around somewhere, and that is the most likely reason.
 
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