A true man of culture, is one double sleeving
Double sleeving is precisely what it says, you’ll be using two sleeves to sleeve your cards. The first needs to be tight enough to fit perfectly around your card and will end up within another and we will be calling it an ‘inner’ sleeve ‘perfect fit’. This sleeve needs to have this perfect fit to just be able to fit around your card without any space left so it can fit inside another normal sleeve.
The second sleeve is a normal one which will contain your inner sleeved card and will be open to all of the elements of a normal card game. This sleeve is what we call an ‘outer’ sleeve, one that contains a back with your favorite art or any color you wish.
At first you might ask yourself, why all the trouble for double sleeving your cards? Well this is pretty simple, do you want your cards to live longer or maybe be sellable as near mint after you’ve played them a lot? If that’s a yes to you, then double sleeving is your cup of tea. The cards will just stay cleaner and prettier than when single sleeved and in some cases even be protected against liquids spills during a match.
There are many different companies selling inner or outer card sleeves and just a few are good enough to be within the A tier. In this article we’ll cover two companies selling one of the best sleeves on the market. These do not break or tear down as fast as all other sleeve brands and will last a lifetime and therefore be a lot more sustainable.
Inner sleeves importance:
Double sleeving requirements:
Inner sleeves options:
The ‘perfect fit’ sleeves, as we call them just to be the normal inner sleeves, are the sleeves that perfectly fit around your card. The perfect fit is needed to be able to fit together with a card inside any other normal sleeve. These sleeves are completely transparent on both sides and most of the time they are really thin. There are also ‘hard’ perfect fit sleeves, but these are made out of sturdier plastic and could add a significant thickness to your final double sleeved card. Of Course the choice is up to you, but if you want a deck to be easily shuffled, I wouldn’t recommend using hard sleeves and staying with thinner inner sleeves.
Recommended brands:
The ‘perfect fit sealable’ sleeves are used to give your card protection on all 4 sides. Normal ‘perfect fit’ sleeves do have an opening on the short side and so do sealable. There are many different sealable sleeves and the worst of them are the ones that seal with a sticker or glue, these should be avoided at all times. Our perfect sealable sleeve has no glue or sticker to seal itself, instead this sleeve has a full sized flap which you will fold into the sleeve on the back side of your card. If correctly sleeved and within an outer sleeve, this will give your cards the ultimate protection, even against liquids. Another positive side of these sleeves is that the card itself doesn’t slide out of the inner sleeve, it adds extra protection against damaging your cards when shuffling or playing.
Recommended brand:
While inner sleeves are something you should do to give your cards the ultimate protection, there is another benefit which some might not know. When playing a competitive card game, there is a rule which tells you that you should use sleeves with a completely opaque back. This is for the reason to not be able to see any hint of the card inside shine through the backside of the sleeve. This is where ‘smoke’ or ‘black’ inner sleeves are used. These sleeves are typically used with outer sleeves that aren’t completely opaque on the back. For instance, white outer sleeves can give a hint of your card inside and so do sometimes other colors. However a black sleeve is the safer option when it comes to avoiding any see through the sleeve. But as you might get bored with black outer sleeves, perfect fit smoke inner sleeves will give you the option to choose any outer sleeve color and stay safe from judges checking your deck.
Recommended brand:
Now you’ve chosen your sleeves for double sleeving your cards, you should know how to double sleeve your cards properly. Double sleeving isn’t rocket science, but knowing how to do it properly is important.
When using perfect fits as your inner sleeve, you should put your card upside down into the inner sleeve, so that the opening is on the bottom of your card. After that, you’ll be inserting the sleeved card into the outer sleeve with the card facing the proper direction, so that the inner sleeve opening is inside and on the bottom of the outer sleeve.
The reason for this is that when dust, dirt or liquids get into your outer sleeve, the more it goes towards the bottom, the narrower and harder it gets to go any further. The inner sleeve opening is also partly sealed with the outer sleeve bottom and it still protects your card. However if the inner sleeve somehow slides a little out of the outer sleeve, dirt and such can still get a grip on your card. If you want to avoid this, sealables are the perfect match!
Sleeving your card with a perfect fit sealable can be done the same way as with a normal perfect fit. However, this time you have to deal with a flap that needs to be folded into the inner sleeve, therefore we want the flap to end up inside the inner sleeve but also on the backside of the card. After that you place the card facing the proper direction into the outer sleeve and your card is completely sealed against any dirt, dust and liquids.
The reason to fold the flap on the back side of the card, is that the flap is a little less wide than the sleeve itself. When folding the flap on the front of the card, you’ll see a slight appearance of the flap edges on your beloved card art. Using a sealable inner protects your card at all times when it slides a little outside of your outer sleeve, because the bottom of the inner is always sealed by the flap.
When you’ve double sleeved your cards, you’ll notice that they look and feel puffy and that there is air trapped inside the sleeves. This is where we want to compress our sleeved cards to be able to use them in games. Find a completely flat surface, stack all your cards and put something completely flat on top. Now gently put pressure on top until you’ve pressed all air out, hold it for a short period and you're done! Store the sleeved cards in a tight deck box, play some games in between and over time the thickness of the sleeves will adjust and less air will be trapped.
Double sleeving your cards gives your cards the best protection and is tournament legal in almost all card games. Perfect fit inner sealable sleeves are the best inner sleeves when it comes to protection but require an additional step when sleeving. Smoked inner sleeves give you that secure feeling when playing competitive games when judges watch your cards while you’re able to choose any outer sleeve you want. While double sleeving is the best way of sleeving your precious cards to keep them near mint when playing, it also adds thickness to your deck. Compressing your cards, playing your games, storing them properly won’t cause any additional issues.
Author: Digital Gate Open