Do you double sleeve your decks? Why / why not?
I don’t have that much first hand experience but here’s a quick literary review of random internet posts:
Pros
- Cards are protected from liquids
- Keeps foils planar
- Top part of the card is protected from dirt
- Is this really such a problem?
- Some people like the shuffle feel
- Cards remain single sleeved when you remove the outer sleeves and put them into a binder
Cons
- More costly
- Thicker decks, especially in 100 card formats
- Deck boxes become tight, trouble fitting tokens etc.
- Shuffling may become more cumbersome
I double sleeved when I began playing because I thought that’s just what people did.
But at this point, if my cards aren’t double sleeved they feel weird in my hand.
So I double sleeve, but mostly out of imagined peer pressure and habit.
Cards being single sleeved while outside the outer sleeve is quite convenient especially when fine tuning a deck, since the cards that you’re debating adding or taking out often lay around on the table, and many being valuable you’re less worried about their protection. The extra cost is not very impactful if you have somewhat valuable cards, like if you have many 2€ or 2$ cards it may be worth the extra protection, but once the cards are worth 5 or more it’s definitely worth it. You definitely have to plan for bigger deck boxes, especially in 100 cards formats, but it’s actually a problem only if you really have a LOT of tokens. The shuffling does become noticeably more cumbersome only if you were on the edge of shuffleability before, otherwise it’s hardly noticeable.
Lot’s of good points. Thanks for chiming in.
How do you shuffle the big 100 card decks? Mash shuffle the whole thing on the table or something else?
@Tiuku In my binder all the expensive cards have an inner sleeve and I usually double sleeve decks that I am going to use in a tournament. It does protect a lot the surface of the cards from scratching when you take it off the binder or change the outter sleeve.
I do only for cards I know that hold a lot of value, and I might want to sell in the future. Cards above 10 euro’s in general. For 5 cent fillers I dont like the extra hassle, and extra plastic usage. I dont feel like I can feel the difference between them when shuffling or looking at my deck, but for me expensive cards are an exception, so max 5 high worth cards per deck.
Note that this may be frowned upon or considered cheating in competitive settings like tournaments, since it would make some cards in your deck thicker than others. I took the same approach but double sleeving the whole deck when I used to play tournaments
I only play edh with friends, so it wont be an issue, but good call ;)
