Best option for sleeving.


Pathfinder Adventure Card Game General Discussion


So I was looking for some expert advice.. After a few game nights now I'm noticing wear and tear on the cards as we use them. I was hoping to pool together everyone's experience with what can be an intimidating endeavor, sleeving cards.
The most important question is sleeves do you guys recommend and why?
The second question is how do you guys do you guys keep your sets sleeved and just have a ton on sleeves or just sleeve the sets you are playing with?


I use Maydyay MDG 7041. They're not too expensive and you can actually fit the cards sleeved into the box. You have to unsleeve the henchmen that you're not using (eventually the biggest single category) and put the cards you remove (basics, elites) back in their boxes.

If you want to use nicer, thicker sleeves, you will need to come up with another storage system, like the Broken Token insert.

Grand Lodge

I have all three sets sleeved with the Ultra-Pro Pathfinder foiled sleeves. They fit well and are uniform but two issues: splitting and peeling. For long term use, I'd say avoid them. While thematically great, they just don't hold up. By the end of the season, they are starting to peel in the corners and edges. (I do shuffle by side merging the cards rather than standard shuffle.)

For my class decks, I use the Ultra-Pro Pro-Matte sleeves. They have been great. With so much fluorescent lighting at venues, these are great on the eyes. Also, they're holding up. I don't shuffle my class deck cards as much as the base set cards but there has been no peeling and no splitting. And if you buy them at volume, you can reduce the cost per sleeve. I recommend these. (I do like the standard Ultra-Pro Deck Protector sleeves but the shiny front isn't great in some lighting conditions. But they do hold up.) Plus they're the same size as the Pathfinder sleeves so intermixing them and shuffling isn't so bad.

The best sleeves I've played with are the KMC Hyper Mat sleeves. They are really nice to play with and feel great. Same matte surface as the Pro-Mattes but the construction is just a bit better. I use the clear ones for all double-sides cards in both the base and class decks (Locations, Scenarioes, Adventures, Character, Role and Tokens).

So if I was going to recommend the best sleeves that will hold up and aren't overly expensive, I'd suggest the Ultra-Pro Pro-Matte. Great colors also.


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I use Dragon shield sleeves. They Are durable, but not sure would They be roo shiny in neon lights.
They Are so thick that you need broken token inserts or similar.


Hannibal_pjv wrote:

I use Dragon shield sleeves. They Are durable, but not sure would They be roo shiny in neon lights.

They Are so thick that you need broken token inserts or similar.

+2


Due to having a weird variety of sleeves available thanks to leftovers from other projects and packs included with Kickstarters, I ended up with a sort of motley-sleeved set. Observations:

The sleeves I prefer are KMC Perfect Fit (inner if doubling) and KMC WVersion (outer/only). WVersions are clear glossy, but I haven't had any trouble reading them and they've been very durable. You can find good deals online for 10 packs of them, as well as the Hyper Mat ones mentioned earlier.

Ultra-Pro clear standard protectors aren't the most durable. Also, their holographic dots can get in the way of card text and leave indents on other protectors if the box is tight. I ended up using these for cards that don't get used/shuffled much or at all, like the adventures, ships, locations, and characters.

Out of the six packs of standard size Mayday sleeves I received with a Kickstarter, two were too small to fit standard cards and the others were rather tight, with the occasional oddly loose or too short one. I ended up using the tight ones as inner sleeves and throwing the unusable ones away. Would avoid.

I haven't purchased Dragon Shield sleeves in ages, but I have used them in the past and they've been fine. I like the "free" card box. :)


I use Ultra Pro Deck Protectors. I find that they are the most consistent and easy to side shuffle. I store my set in baseball card boxes with dividers inside original box.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I also use Ultra Pro - but then again I'm going to break pretty much any sleeves I use with how I shuffle, so I'm going for quantity rather than high quality.


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I use Dragon Shields (for single sided cards) and the Ultra Pro inner fits (for double-sided cards). I use the stock insert with them, and need to split stacks between their normal spot and the character slots/deck box area in order to fit everything, but everything does fit with the standard insert (it's a tight squeeze). Keeping the adventure deck boxes inside of the main box is impossible with this setup however (not that I personally care, as I get rid of those the moment I open them).


If you are looking to not spend a lot...Wal-Mart sells ultra-pro sleeves. I think they are a cheaper version, they don't have the hologram and you get a 100 pack for around a buck. I don't know how long they will hold up but they look good and are a cheap alternative, even if you have to replace them sooner. I did break down and buy a Broken Token insert which is totally worth the money! It looks awesome and works incredibly well.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Penny sleeves are messy and from my experience with other games, not worth it for any deck you need to shuffle as often as you do with the ACG.

Scarab Sages

I also use Ultra-Pro - not the ones with two clear sides, but the ones with black matte backs. I buy them on eBay from a store called legends-sports-group, which sells them in 1,000, 3,000, and 6,000 lots. Last time I bought the 6k bundle (here) to use with a variety of games (Mage Wars, Android: Netrunner, and so forth). The cost-per-sleeve when you go this route is a little under 3.5¢ per sleeve, which, as far as I've been able to find, is cheaper than just about every option other than penny sleeves.


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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Calthaer wrote:
I also use Ultra-Pro - not the ones with two clear sides, but the ones with black matte backs. I buy them on eBay from a store called legends-sports-group, which sells them in 1,000, 3,000, and 6,000 lots. Last time I bought the 6k bundle (here) to use with a variety of games (Mage Wars, Android: Netrunner, and so forth). The cost-per-sleeve when you go this route is a little under 3.5¢ per sleeve, which, as far as I've been able to find, is cheaper than just about every option other than penny sleeves.

The place I go to for my sleeves has the same item for a bit cheaper: potomac distribution.


I also use Potomac Distribution.

Scarab Sages

Awesome! Great tip; thanks!


Awesome deal!
Also somewhere for PACG UltraPro available?

Grand Lodge

Myfly wrote:

Awesome deal!

Also somewhere for PACG UltraPro available?

The best (consistent) place for them is Miniature Market. I'm sure, like myself, you've invested enough into them that you don't want to turn from them. For people just starting to sleeve their sets, I don't recommend them at all. They aren't constructed for long term play.


I noticed a while ago that Ultra Pro now lists the PACG sleeves as out of print. You can obviously still buy them, so I'm not 100% sure what that means. Maybe they just aren't printing any more right now and don't plan to do so at this time. But that doesn't mean they won't ever. Just an interesting thing to note, especially if you were on the fence about picking some up.


Vic, I bought just 6100 pacg sleeves to get my whole collection sleeved.

When new adventure boxes appear, could you please confirm that pacg sleeves will be available until pacg series ends???

Grand Lodge

Hawkmoon269 wrote:
I noticed a while ago that Ultra Pro now lists the PACG sleeves as out of print. You can obviously still buy them, so I'm not 100% sure what that means. Maybe they just aren't printing any more right now and don't plan to do so at this time. But that doesn't mean they won't ever. Just an interesting thing to note, especially if you were on the fence about picking some up.

They're discontinued. I'm guessing that my findings are part of the reason why they did this.

Sovereign Court

Myfly wrote:

Vic, I bought just 6100 pacg sleeves to get my whole collection sleeved.

When new adventure boxes appear, could you please confirm that pacg sleeves will be available until pacg series ends???

Unless Paizo enters the sleeve-manufacturing business themselves, there's no way anyone could confirm that.


Iammars wrote:
Penny sleeves are messy and from my experience with other games, not worth it for any deck you need to shuffle as often as you do with the ACG.

Credentials: I've dealt years of poker games and played a lot of CCGs.

It depends on how you shuffle. Penny sleeves shuffle fine if you halve the deck, hold one half loosely, mate the other half length-wise to the half being beld, then push the cards through. Repeat a few times, alternate with drop shuffling, and you have a respectably randomized stack of cards.

I agree if you try to riffle shuffle, you'll end up with a mess, but that's an inefficient way to shuffle anyway, not to mention revealing the bottom cards to people who sit within something like a 160* arc in front of you.

Penny sleeves cost about $8.00 per 1000. They work fine if the cards are manipulated properly, which takes about 30 seconds to learn. How much do the opaque backed sleeves cost?


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Penny sleeves are certainly passable, but they don't hold a candle to proper sleeves that have a much more snug fit around the card. Penny sleeves are so cheap because they're as thin as they can possibly be, made from the cheapest plastic possible, and have wide variances into the cuts of each individual sleeve (some are noticeably wider/fatter/longer/shorter than others). Sure, you can shuffle a deck sleeved with penny sleeves (and I'd even go so far as to say it's easier to shuffle with penny sleeves than it is to shuffle unsleeved cards without damaging them), but it's far slower than shuffling properly sleeved cards. As for the price of opaque sleeves with higher quality control, look upthread to see you can get them for about 3.2 cents a sleeve; the extra price being well worth it in my opinion for the fact they are easier to shuffle and do a better job at protecting the cards. Sleeves that are too loose and allow the cards inside to jostle a bit will still wear down the edges of the card after repeated shuffling.

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