Card Sleeves

Clear penny sleeves and soft card sleeves for trading cards — the first layer of protection before a toploader, binder or slab case. Cheap enough to use on everything, which is the whole idea: the sleeve is what stands between a card and a fingerprint from the moment it leaves the pack.

The SlabShield Clear Penny Sleeves come 100 to a pack at 66 × 91 mm (2.60 × 3.58 inch), which takes a standard trading card: Pokémon, Lorcana, One Piece, Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, Gundam, Riftbound and standard sports cards. Cards go in and come out freely, because forcing a corner is exactly how corners get dinged.

They are genuinely clear rather than hazy, so a binder page stays browsable and a photo still shows the card. The polypropylene is soft enough to flex rather than split on the hundredth sleeve of an evening, the edges are cut clean with no burrs to catch a corner, and the material is acid-free and archival-safe so the sleeve does not cause the damage it was bought to prevent.

A sleeve is step one, not the whole job. Before grading, every grader wants the card sleeved before it is packed. Before a magnetic card case or binder, the sleeve stops the rigid holder itself wearing the edges.

The rigid step that follows is a toploader, and that is also on this page. The SlabShield 35pt Toploaders come 100 to an order as four packs of 25, in the standard 3 × 4 inch size, clear front and back so a card stays readable while it is protected. 35pt is 0.035 inch, about 0.89 mm, and that number is the thickest card one will take — a standard modern card runs around 12pt, roughly 0.3 mm, so it sits inside comfortably with a penny sleeve still on. Patch, relic, jersey and memorabilia cards run 55pt and upwards and need a holder rated for it; what size toploader do I need covers how to work that out without guessing.

Sleeve first, then toploader, in that order, so the card surface never touches the hard plastic. For where the cards live afterwards, see how to store trading cards so they stay mint.

Not for graded slabs — those want slab cases or bumper guards instead.