Seems like buying whole packs of sleeves is what majority here do and consider doing, even with intensions of opening the pack to place a single sleeve in binder. I really find that odd with the availability of single sleeves, i really don’t have any real need to encourage people in collecting sleeves or buying individual sleeves for binders but that just feels like an ignored way of doing things so can’t help but dig a bit deeper in discussing it
https://sleevespokemon.weebly.com/ actually is a very good looking resource for sleeves! And single sleeves are extremely cheap, i have no intensions in buying full sleeve packs to open when wither ebay has them with cheap international shipping or japanese mercari has them cheap, the amount of sleeves i’ve bought isn’t very big but still not a single sleeve i have wanted and haven’t bought because it hasn’t been available as single
@Will a lovely looking stack, especially that surfing pikachu sleeve pack! Let’s see if i manage to encourage you or any other person to actually start a sleeve binder!
@thsigma no extra sleeves when you buy only single sleeves, problem solved
@connorc would love to see especially some of those d&p era prelease sleeves, please share some photos!
@zomus ofc people can ask what they want and there’s plenty of sellers trying to sell some sleeves for ripoff prices but the same goes for cards or any other pokemon merch too, the cheap listings are there and are relatively easily found imo
@0ean i think kinda yeah but at least for single sleeves it seems to usually mean that instead of that 1$ the waifu sleeves can be something like 3-5$, i guess you can call that tax
I was surprised to learn that a lot of people are into sleeve art, the variety of what and how you collect is what makes this hobby unique and fun. Never been into the sleeves and usually put my damaged or ungradable cards in them. but maybe I should keep some…to me they are like the coins, cool art but I can barely keep up with cards much less all the extras!
A friend once showed me this site which I think is a great ressource. It is maintained by a French pokemon sleeves collector and aims to document all kinds of pokemon sleeve designs pokemon ever made. I have no connection to them but the site has come in handy for me more than once in the past and I am super grateful that it exists.
These are some of my favourite designs artwork-wise:
There’s some beautiful sleeves out there! I mostly use them to make crafts with, like magnets and buttons (I do the same with empty booster packs and other materials) since they’re not really worth anything.
You could sell a set of 10, 20, 30 on eBay or whatever you have. I bet some people would buy the set for a binder so they don’t have to purchase all the packs individually.
Very nice examples of prices, usage and awesome unique art on them, the blacephalon sleeve looks like it might be made by Kusube, really adore that style
What have you done… the only reason why I avoided sleeves was because I didn’t want to search for Gyarados sleeves on my own… you have unlocked a new financial concern with this hidden gem of a link.
I thank you.
I hate you.
Pray for me. XD
Edit: I stand corrected. Turns out I have the majority already just by hapoenstance. Man Gyarados has almost no love in the sleeves game. Magikarp has some home runs though.
Is the link for Western releases 404ed for anyone else?
So there is another stained-glass artwork besides the 3-bird promo card…wish Pokemon would do an entire card set or subset of stained glass character artworks.
I used to love to collect sleeves, but the last time I did, it was around the ADV/PCG/DP timeframe and unfortunately I don’t have the release info of most of the sleeves I have. I just thought they were cool and traded for them at Worlds or on Pokegym. I’ll pull them out of storage next chance I get!
I love the look of the official art sleeves! Unfortunately they’re horrendous to play with without oversleeves, otherwise I’d be more inclined to purchase cute sleeves for regular play and pop an extra in the binder to keep. I go through so many packs of sleeves just from regular play.
I’ve got a few of the Piplup ones, and I like to pick any singles up that have cameos in them when I see them. I definitely think they’re collectable, since they’re very affordable for stunning pieces of art.
About 5~10% of the time I purchase singles off Mercari/YAJ, the seller is kind enough to ship them in official sleeves, and I like setting them aside ‘just in case’.
…for what it is worth - you might be interested - where binder-presentable items are concerned, another fun but abundant oddity is the full-colour, double-sided separators that come included in “refill” packs of the 9-pocket card files. I am not sure when they began this, but I have seen dozens of styles over the last few years alone:
Nice to see people with sleeve collections of any size popping up, would love anyone to post here what they have! I’ll probably use this thread to post new sleeve releases if they are special to my eyes and anyone else is free to do so too
Here’s an example of each kind I collected. I don’t know for sure how any of these were distributed. There were rumors back in the day that maroon and orange were rare colors, and naturally people wanted the Pikachu’s and put a big premium on the gold since they were much older than the silver. The gold “Pokemon Monster Card Game International” sleeves I have never seen come up elsewhere. The silver ones (I do have them elsewhere) were given out at the 1999 TMB in a pack of 62, and maybe at other things since they’re relatively common, but I have never seen another gold set.
I know @robertocaterpie5 collects sleeves. I gave him one of each sleeve I had about a year ago. I haven’t seen him posted them anywhere yet, but I assume Robert has quite a few by now?
western sleeves link working fine for me!
