I spend a lot of money on sleeves because I’m on the autism spectrum and want my cards to be properly protected in a very specific manner. I typically buy my sleeves in bulk so that I can get the lowest unit price. Recently, I ordered several thousand KMC perfect fit sleeves, which have always been by go-to inner sleeves. For the past four years, my standard routine for sleeving valuable cards had been to use KMC perfect fits as the inner sleeve, and UltraPro clear deck protectors (#82667 or #82689) as the outer sleeve. Since last year, however, I also started using UltraPro Clear Platinum Card Protectors (#15221) as the outer sleeve, since they are of better quality on average and also don’t have the annoying hologram seal that the UltraPro deck protectors all have (for someone as autistic as myself, that’s a big deal). But as I opened up the KMC perfect fits and starting to sleeve some of my cards, I immediately noticed something off. Many of the “perfect fit” sleeves were slightly bigger than they usually were. The average casual collector probably wouldn’t have noticed, but I had extensive experience sleeving countless numbers of trading cards and I knew what the proper dimensions of the perfect fit sleeve should be down to a micron, so for me it was very obvious. My suspicions were confirmed when I tried to double sleeve, as per my usual routine. Although some of the perfect fit sleeves were able to fit inside UltraPro deck protectors, others struggled to do so. Moreover, I have a very specific method of sleeving which I always follow, and this method involves first sleeving the card with a perfect fit sleeve in a reverse fashion so that the opening of the perfect fit sleeve is on the bottom of the card, and then putting that sleeved card inside the deck protector outer sleeve in the normal fashion, with the top of the card facing the opening of the deck protector. When I tried to double sleeve using this method, I noticed an excessive amount of resistance (far more than usual) faced by the card, causing the perfect fit sleeve to separate from the card as I pushed it into the outer sleeve. This is something that I had never encountered before. By now, I was sure that the quality of the KMC “perfect fit” sleeves (I use double quotes around “perfect fit” because that is hardly an accurate representation anymore) was to blame, especially given the variance that I noticed among them. Up until now, I had assumed that a Japanese company like KMC would always put out excellent product with good quality control, but my expectations have been tempered. I suspect that due to the great increase in demand for card sleeves over the past year, and the great influx of filthy casuals into this hobby who can’t tell the difference between an excellent sleeve and a mediocre sleeve if their lives depended on it, card sleeve manufacturers have realized that they can get away with dumping garbage product with terrible quality control into the market because they will all get bought up anyway. If people are okay with buying garbage product, then companies will be more than happy to keep churning out garbage product. So it seems that for the foreseeable future, we will have to deal with garbage quality control in card sleeves, as with many other things. The old days when I could effortlessly double sleeve cards are gone for good.
I forget exactly what happened so this might be slightly inaccurate, but KMC had amazing quality control for a long time. At one point, they had some production line issues and they produced sleeves with really poor QC, it’s very obvious in the perfect fits especially. At some point they fixed it, but there are a lot of people still selling the old kind I’ve noticed. I believe the “corrected” ones are in a blue package with a “USA LIMITED” logo on it.
I bought these perfect fits from a Japanese storefront on Amazon who was selling them in bulk at lower rates than usual. I didn’t think twice about it because KMC products have a good reputation, and all the sleeves were obviously still sealed. The order came in sets of 1000 each (10 packs of 100 sleeves), like below:
I didn’t see any “USA LIMITED” logo on the sleeve packages, so maybe these are from a defective batch. I have many cards that I had double-sleeved using KMC Perfect Fits back around 2018-2019, and by comparing those perfect fits with the ones I recently bought, I could tell there was a substantial difference.
Didn’t really read that wall of text but I should be getting some perfect fits from amazon tomorrow, fingers crossed they are normal.
I’m not sure the packaging has anything to do with it. I have only ever bought my Perfect Fits from Amazon and they have only ever been packaged just like this pic. This is how mine have always come.
The packaging does matter. I have had the same issue as @foodin065 in the past, and mine were the same packaging also from probably the same Amazon listing. The consistency was horrible, some wouldn’t even fit on to cards properly. I don’t use perfect fits anymore, but after that issue I switched to the blue package and didn’t have an issue with a single sleeve.
That Amazon listing has 1000 for $37 which is very cheap, and I’m guessing it’s because the seller just has a ton of old product to offload. Most of the reviews on the listing all talk about the exact same problems. I have yet to see 1000 count of the blue package for as cheap as that.
I forget where I originally heard of the KMC issues, but I know that Tolarian Community College confirmed it in one of his sleeve review videos here:
Interesting. Maybe I have just been fortunate.
First and foremost LOL at you for claiming you’re autistic because you sleeve your cards. Second, LMAO to anyone paying more than $1 for a pack of sleeves. Third, penny sleeves are superior.
That’s not what OP said.
KMC perfect fits are usually $5. These aren’t penny sleeves, they are nickel sleeves
I think he actually is autistic…
OP, tbh, I skimmed your post, but Dragon Shield sealing perfect fits are pretty damn crispy and you may like them
I second Dragon Shields. Have been using them for 5+ years with MTG and have never had any issues.
KMC’s regular sleeves had a huge decrease in quality a few years ago when they were purchased by another company. This, sooner or later, was expectable.
That said, Dragon Shields don’t let me down.