This isn’t a subject that I find is talked about a lot, but it should be. See, I just recently discovered that having good sleeves on my cards saved me from having to replace my cards. A quick story and then some additional thoughts.
I’ve been playing since 1994 and can count the number of sleeves I’ve busted in all this time on one hand. Of course I treat my cards with kid gloves. Some of them I paid a lot of money for and don’t want to see them ruined.
Well, just recently, at a Friday Night Magic, I was playing an opponent who took my deck and shuffled it quite vigorously. When he handed it back to me, he had busted more sleeves than I’d busted in a lifetime of Magic.
Fortunately, I had a sideboard with me so I was able to remove the sleeves from the sideboard and replace the ones that were busted. But what if I wasn’t playing a sideboard or the sideboard wasn’t in sleeves? I would have had to go upstairs, get new sleeves and sleeve up my cards. This would have taken time away from the match.
Yes, this is the first time this has ever happened to me during the course of an event. I consider myself one of the lucky ones because this sort of thing happens all the time. At least so I hear.
But it’s not so much the sleeves that bother me. I mean, after all, sleeves are only a few bucks for 50 sleeves. I’m certainly not going to go broke from buying a package of them. But what about the cards themselves? What if I wasn’t playing with sleeves or had the real cheap ones? My cards COULD have been bent or God knows what? I mean this guy was really shuffling my deck.
I can’t put a value on your cards for you. Only you can do that. Some people play with Power 9 cards without sleeves. I cringe when I hear this, but it’s true. They just don’t care and there isn’t anything you can do or say to make them care. So, if that’s YOU, then reading this article has been a complete waste of your time.
But, if you’re like me and other people like me, you’ll probably want to make sure that you play with sleeves. Forgetting about how much you value your own cards, what happens if you decide you want to trade your old cards for new cards? In the case of playing Standard Constructed, that happens a lot, especially with people who can’t afford to go out and buy new cards all the time.
If your cards are beat up because you either didn’t use sleeves or used cheap sleeves, few people are going to give you equal value for your card. Your Jace, Architect Of Thought might be worth $35 mint, but if it’s all bent up, do you think anybody is going to trade you a $35 card that IS mint in return? I know I wouldn’t. If a card is bent enough, even in sleeves, it could be considered marked and unplayable.
So do yourself a favor. Invest a few bucks and buy yourself some GOOD sleeves when you play Magic.
Your cards will thank you for it.
To YOUR Magic the Gathering Enjoyment,
Steve “Land Boy” Wagenheim
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