As some of you might know I used to play Pokemon competitively, I got together with a bunch of my old buddies who still play and they’ve started playing their own legacy format to relive nostalgia. I love this idea, my question though is how best would I protect my cards. I’m going to be buying cards specifically for playing with so I don’t hurt my binder collection but I’d still like to keep them relatively safe? I heard playing them sleeved and then placed into a top loader is pretty solid.
Yeah as long as you’re playing with your mates or friendlies who don’t rule-nazi i’d definitely go with toploaders, or cardsavers.
I don’t see cards being damaged from being handled in loaders while sleeved.
Card savers. They protect well and produce a waaay thinner deck to handle than top loads.
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Thinner but a bit more awkward to play if you consider the flaps.
What flaps?
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The bit that says Cardsavers.
They’re longer in length than a toploader, unless there’s smaller version without it. Then it’s perfectly fine.
There is a smaller version but even the 1s can be altered with scissors.
Haha you really hate toploaders huh 
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Let’s see what Elf decides what he does, i gave him two good options
Both will perfectly do the job, thinner and the same size as toploader would be better though.
I’ll have to make the decision once I build rain dance blastoise lol. If card savers are thinner than those are probably a better choice.
Have fun with that man playing in old formats is always a ton of fun same goes with the VG formats like Gen2 6v6 on Pokemon Crystal haha, yeah they’re about twice as thin.
Ultra pro standard size sleeves are cheap and will work fine. You physically wont be able to play with top loaders and card savers.
This sounds like a challenge. There’s always more than one way to shuffle a deck.
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So then?
I used to print out images of cards when I wanted to build a deck to test it out before buying the actual cards. If you want to avoid all damage whatsoever, this is a possible solution especially if you only play with friends. But there us something to be said about using real cards.
Use proxies.
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I used to go hard on the proxy life when I tested for tournaments, in recent years I have become more fond of playing with actual cards. Almost like you have a connection with the cards themselves.
Few years ago when I was judging some tournaments, I had one guy showing up with a full deck of top loaders.
He wasn’t able to shuffle it so I gave him the option; re sleeve the cards or be disqualified. Simple as that. Besides that, the noise the top loaders made when he did his ‘shuffle’ technique was all but pleasant.
Personally, I am slowly building the original Base Set Raindancer Blastoise deck and what I do is just hunt for played cards, plenty of low quality cards out there and sleeve them in the ticker Dragon Shields so you would be less able to feel any bends in the cards.
I understand that you wanna play vintage, but just don’t do it with mint cards. Check out old Magic vintage play videos on Youtube. Some of those guys just play unsleeved and play with heavy played Black Lotus’ or, as said; use proxies. Get a solid label printer (like e.g. the Brother QL750) and just print out card text and slap the label onto a 0.0001$ valued card.
I don’t plan on buying mint cards, I’ve already jokingly said I’ll show up with a PSA 10 built deck. I know that Dragon shield sleeves are high quality and I do plan on buying more since I use them for my binder collection as well, I personally haven’t tried shuffling with top loaders or anything yet, I have enough sitting at home to try with but not the time currently to try it. I appreciate all the feedback from everyone as well. I wasn’t too sure what kind of response I would get, do you mind sending me your list? My current one is pretty bare bones since I haven’t had a chance to test it out yet.
bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Raindance_(TCG)
I am rebuilding this. But there are other variants, depending how far you wanna stretch WotC era.
From an judge point of view, a top loader is a marked item. You can put key cards more into one side of the loader so you know what you got top deck. But besides of that, unless you use pack fresh top loaders, which are super tight, you gotta double sleeve cards just to make them less move around inside it. Nothing more stupid that shuffling your cards out of a 10-time used top loaders because the opening is not that tight any more.
Gee that list is completely different to mine, I’m running a 3-3 Gyarados line and a 2-2 Dewgong line so I had more than just one card to rely on. I can understand in a sanctioned tournament how top loaders aren’t allowed, I’m glad I never saw anything too absurd in my years playing. Besides the one year at nationals I had to call a judge over a few times because I kept knocking my deck over on accident. Despite that being my best performing year it was defiantly my most embarrassing year.