Card Sleeves

A card sleeve is the first layer around your card and the cheapest piece of protection there is. Without one, the surface picks up scratches every time you pick a card up or slide it past another, and that is exactly what a grader looks at. For single cards that are worth something, a sleeve is not a luxury.

Our collection holds three kinds:

• Soft sleeves — also known as penny sleeves. Thin and flexible, the standard first layer under a toploader. Per 100 or per case, because you always need more than you think.
• Semi rigid card holders — stiffer than a sleeve, but not as hard as a toploader. This is what PSA asks for when you send a card in for grading.
• Graded card sleeves — large sleeves that go around a whole slab. For protecting and shipping cards that are already graded.

Sending cards in for grading? There is also a Card Grading Submission Combo Pack in here, so you do not have to order everything separately.

They look alike and they do different jobs. A soft sleeve is thin and flexible: you slide it around the card, and the whole thing then goes into a toploader or a binder. A semi rigid holder is considerably stiffer and holds the card in place without needing anything around it.

The difference that matters: PSA only accepts semi rigid holders for a submission. Send a card in a toploader and it gets taken out before it goes down the line — which is exactly the moment you are not there. For ordinary storage and shipping a soft sleeve in a toploader is the better choice, because that absorbs a knock where a semi rigid bends.

In short: semi rigid for submissions, soft sleeve plus toploader for everything else.