I’ve been doing some tests to find the less risky sleeve to use for toploader long-term storage and surprisingly found that both pennies sleeves and deck sleeve can cause considerable damage. I used the following methodology:
- Always using new sleeves.
- Taking photos of the cards from all angles with a 30x magnifying len & also with the smartphone light to reveal hidden micro scratches.
- Obviously getting a card in or out a sleeve 100x times will scratch it, I limited the testing from 3 to 5 times inserting a removing a card.
Apparently, Dragon Shield / deck sleeves issues comes from them being “too hard” compare to soft sleeves, there is too much friction when the cards gets in and out.
For Penny sleeves, the damage seems to be mitigated by avoiding pinching the sleeves to remove the card I always though that this was better to avoid the surface of the sleeves getting into contact with the holo while inserting / removing the cards but this is super detrimental for the backs.
Results:
Dragon Shield Classic Border Markings that appears on the corner back after +3 sleeves changes:
Penny sleeves scratches that appear after 3-5 removals
Honestly after this I don’t know what to use. Any insight on what to do to avoid this or what sleeve to use? I always use dragon shields with side loading binders but now that I have more expensive cards was thinking about using toploaders binders, however the fear of the sleeve scratching them is blocking me from opening new sealed products because I don’t know what to do with the cards 
1 Like
Versy
2
I’ve never noticed any damage from using sleeves personally. How hard are you gripping them? Maybe the toploaders are too tight? Are you sure there was no dirt or dust on the card or in the sleeve? I’ve had dirt from a card get caught in the sleeve before.
100% clean and new sleeves and tried with several. You’ll only notice after inserting and removing the cards around 2-4 times. As per the toploaders, just regular premium toploaders from ultrapro. Probably the thing is that dragon shield sleeves are only to be used with perfect fits or for playing. As per the scratches with the penny sleeves, probably is a mishandling from my side
xileets
4
Did you do a before and after? I hate asking, but I gotta cuz I don’t see a mention.
I’ve never noticed significant damage, but generally, I only sleeve mine once carefully, and then don’t remove them. I always use UP Penny sleeves for storage sleeving. Thicker play sleeves may be more capable of scratching since they’re stiffer, but… ? And then I use UP Pro fot (perfect fit inners) because they’re clearer, and throw out the 5% that are too tight. Dragon shield and KMC are slightly less clear.
haha yes, I did the before and after with more than 20 cards and taking photos / videos.
With pennies there are no issues, I was doing a wrong technique pinching the sides of the sleeves and that caused scratches, with the dragon shields / deck sleeves there is no way of not scratching the bottom back of the cards if you remove them 2-3 times. If you put it once and stay there foreever there is not going to be any problem. If you need to remove from sleeves for grading, once is probably ok but more than that I would honestly cut the sleeves haha.
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xileets
6
Dragon shields are designed for gameplay, so I imagine, they’re assumption is that most (and they’d love for everyone to buy) inner sleeves as well. So, the outer sleeve never touches the actual card. This is all a pain, Ain’t it? 
2 Likes
Never seen damage from deck protectors on the back of any of my cards which I’m storing in them sans perfect fit, my guess is this damage is coming from craming and pulling from the top-loader? Though I still don’t think it’s possible unless you’re grabbing them with your nails or tugging while caught on the plastic.
xileets
8
OP Determined he was squeezing from the sides a little, which I can understand causing damage: the seam pressing the sleeve against the card just near the edge. This might explain his issues. 
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