I carry my cube(s) around in a Pirate Lab HQ backpack. The cubes themselves are stored in plain white BCW boxes. I store tokens and lands in two Planar Chaos fat pack boxes. Tokens are sleeved by appropriate color. It's not pretty or fancy, but it certainly gets the job done.
I also find that with so many tokens, I need to do a token audit a few times a year and just remove anything that I don't need anymore which helps to free up space in the box.
Either Dragon Shield or Katana are probably the best on the market right now. Katana sleeves have proved to be somewhat hard to get, especially in bulk rates to sleeve 500 or more cards at once.
I use UltraPro Eclipse sleeves for my powered cube. They are also great as far as shuffle feel and durability. Cons for me are the 'frosted' style fronts which can often just hide the fact that you're playing with foils. It also seems they can vary in length between cases/packs. I bought a case plus several packs in order to have enough for my entire cube and I have the unfortunate problem now of about a third of the cube being in sleeves that are just a bit taller than the rest. I will add that I have Eclipse sleeves on a few pauper decks and I haven't seen the miscut problem there. So, I guess YMMV.
Has anyone here tried out the new Ultimate Guard Katana sleeves?
I haven't even been able to get a single pack to sleeve a random deck in order to test them. My LGS can't keep them in stock. I do have a friend who ordered some online. He let me check them out and shuffle them when he got them, so I can vouch for the look and the shuffle feel on a small sample size. Just based on that, assuming you could get them for a decent price and there aren't any quality issues between cases when buying that many, it seems like a good sleeve option.
Oh..... I see. I thought you were talking about them stacked, I.e. Thickness. What a goof I am!
Yeah, my experience has been spotty with Ultra-Pro and their tolerances. I can see having a 3+/-mm or so tolerance on their penny sleeves. But it gets pretty damn ridiculus when the 1 or 2 mm tolerance on their pro-fits and a similar tolerances on their deck sleeves mean double sleeved cards can stick out of the top.
Even the cheaper BCW sleeves have much tighter tolerances.
Really the only reason I have to buy Ultra-Pro is their ubiquitousness with the market. Stores that offer Dragon or KMC are typically sold out whenever I really need to buy them and have a ton on hand when I don't need to buy any.
This reply was six months in the making. lol
I would offer an update on the Eclipse sleeves, but there's not much to offer. The unfortunate discrepancy in sleeve height across my cube makes me really dislike them. I can also add that the matte front on the Eclipse sleeves cuts down on glare, but also cuts down on how shiny your foils are. I would recommend Eclipse for miscellaneous decks or as draft sleeves that will hold up for a long time, but I don't think they are great for cubes.
I've had the same issue (noticeably inconsistent size) with Ultra Pro sleeves before, although I believe it was a different line than Eclipse.
For those complaining about the quality of KMC, there was a response posted earlier in the thread. KMC claims this was the results of knock-offs being sold as authentic KMCs on Amazon by 3rd party sellers. I have no idea whether this is true or not. I purchased my KMC sleeves around the time that complaints began popping up and mine have been great so far. (My cube is still in the original sleeves after several years and we've only lost a few to splitting, but my group doesn't get together as often as some do.)
The best sleeves we've ever had on the cube are KMC Mattes. We replaced those after about three years of use with KMC Hypers about the time that the bad batches were popping up. The Hypers were arguably the worst sleeves I've ever used in terms of quality. We split multiple sleeves every cube night and they were really bad about busting across the bottom. I had good experience with the Eclipse sleeves and using them on various decks, so that's why I went with them for the cube. Obviously that was a mistake, though. If I could just always get those same original KMC Mattes, I'd use those forever.
What do you mean by, "two different heights"? Is the difference with a single sleeved card between batches that dramatic in height? That's nuts.
Here's the cube with the cards standing up right. You can visibly see the obvious difference in height between the batches.
Under normal circumstances without the height issue, I love Eclipse sleeves. The quality is great. The shuffle feel is great. With this height issue, though, I really dislike them. They feel terrible to shuffle. I've since picked up a few packs here and there that have matched the taller sleeves to try to off set it some, but I sleeved the basics first, so they are all in the shorter sleeves. I've thought about just picking up another case to try to match one or the other, but I really don't need that many extra sleeves.
I posted this pic to the UltraPro Facebook hoping they'd recognize the issue, but I got no responses.
We resleeved with KMC hypers about two or so years ago. They were the worst sleeves I've ever used and I played back in the late 90s when all you could get were red and black Ultra Pros. We've since sleeved with Ultra Pro Eclipse. The quality on them is great as far as durability and shuffle feel goes, but one box won't sleeve the whole cube, so we had to purchase for two batches. Unfortunately that resulted in two different heights, so beware if you decide to go that direction. I'd recommend for a single deck, but I don't think I'd go Eclipse for something as large as a cube again.
I've had my cube in a regular old white cardboard long box since its inception. There are plenty of options with Ultimate Guard boxes or custom wood boxes, but just starting out, anything you have available is great.
I've read mixed reviews on the CUB3, but if you don't travel with your cube and don't move it often, it seems to be a really cool option. I think The Professor did a review video on it.
We got our first draft in after sleeving in the Eclipse sleeves and the look and feel great. The only negative that I'd give them is there are some sizing inconsistencies. I haven't actually gone through and counted to get the numbers and percentage, but just eyeballing, I'd say it's probably somewhere between 20-40 sleeves that were a bit taller than the rest. That's out of 10 total packs, 8 of which were in the same unopened box. The taller sleeves were random throughout and not just from the two packs I bought separate. That's a bit of a bummer.
A possibility occurred to me. Maybe the equipment used to make the sleeves is too old and worn out?
Those machines wear out like anything else. So while they might pass some initial QC test or sit within some define operating parameters, enough of those numbers might be off just enough to degrade the overall quality of the final product. Not the first time that happened.
I believe KMC was purchased by a different parent company, but they kept all the same branding. Because of that it seems that this parent company has tried to cut costs in some ways and changed the formula. The sleeves themselves still feel really well and the corners hold up great, but it seems the glue they are using just isn't holding up like it used to.
I've had my cube sleeved in black KMC hyper mattes w/ KMC perfect fits for probably the last 24-30 months or so, and I can't even remember the last time we split a sleeve. They've been fantastic.
But from what I understand, they've changed their process over the past year or so, and they suck now. I'll likely switch to perfect hards w/ Dragon Shields the next time I re-sleeve.
Yeah, I did a bit of research on the "best quality sleeves" before I bought enough sleeves for the whole cube. Everywhere I looked the KMC Hypers were getting fantastic reviews. Reddit loved them. People here loved them. The Professor had them ranked at number one on his list and I watched his video where he really put them through the ringer with the stretch test. I had KMC Mattes (not Hypers) on before and they were really good. We'd split one every now and then, but not often, so I fully expected the Hypers to be just as good or better. They shuffle well and feel really good in your hands, but they split like crazy across the bottom. The corners seem to hold up, but I'd be willing to bet that a good third of my cube right now has sleeves that are fully split across the bottom and most of the rest starting to splt. We've had so many split that I'm now out of extra sleeves, which is why I'm buying sleeves. It's been less than two years (last Feb) since we last sleeved, which feels like an incredibly short time considering the amount of money and time it takes to sleeve an entire cube. The original KMC Mattes are now on my secondary cube and still going strong after probably five years or so of use. I'm hoping the Eclipse sleeves hold up to long term use. They look and feel great, I just don't know about their longevity.
For reference this is what's happening. This defeats the purpose of double sleeving in the first place.
I bit the bullet today and ordered Ultra Pro Eclipse sleeves to resleeve the cube. I used them on my deck at Eternal Weekend and really liked their shuffle feel. I've been extremely unhappy with the KMC Hyper Mattes that I'm currently using. It was very disappointing after hearing and reading such high praise for them that they turned out to be absolute trash. I'm hoping the Eclipse sleeves will at least hold up better. We bust a few KMCs every time we draft.
I just got 1000 KMC hyper Matte sleeves an 800 perfect fit these are some beautiful sleeves
Hopefully the batch your sleeves came from is better than mine. I sleeved my cube in black KMC Hyper Mattes and Perfect Fits last year. They are possibly the worst quality sleeves I've ever had. They feel great to shuffle, but it seems we split several every time we have a cube night. The corners hold up, but they're bad to split across the bottom.
@Zetsu_Sensei: Earlier this year we moved from black KMC Mattes to black KMC Hyper Mattes. It seems that we bust at least one sleeve every time we cube since going to the Hyper Mattes. I believe it's due to side shuffling and the corners poking into the side of the sleeves as they come down on each other. I've also noticed several that I've had to replace due to the bottom splitting. After every few drafts, I find that I need to go through the entire cube and pull the 'bad' sleeves that are busting open at the bottom. Obviously the KMC Mattes had busted sleeves and splitting issues as well, but we had those sleeves on for something like three years or so, maybe even four and the amount of busted sleeves was nowhere near what I've seen with the Hypers. The last thing I don't like as well is the texture on the back of the Hypers vs the normal Mattes. The Mattes felt just that, matte. Not glossy. The Hypers have a rough texture that, I guess, is supposed to protect from scratches and grime. I'm not a fan of it, though. That's not really a fault of the sleeve, but more a personal preference of mine.
With all that said, it's possible that I just ended up with a few bad packs when I purchased mine, however, I probably won't be going with Hypers when we upgrade sleeves again.
That Innistrad box is super sick. The only thing I can say negative is that it needs a handle for easy transportation. The detail is so nice, though. I love the claw marks.
I also find that with so many tokens, I need to do a token audit a few times a year and just remove anything that I don't need anymore which helps to free up space in the box.
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I use UltraPro Eclipse sleeves for my powered cube. They are also great as far as shuffle feel and durability. Cons for me are the 'frosted' style fronts which can often just hide the fact that you're playing with foils. It also seems they can vary in length between cases/packs. I bought a case plus several packs in order to have enough for my entire cube and I have the unfortunate problem now of about a third of the cube being in sleeves that are just a bit taller than the rest. I will add that I have Eclipse sleeves on a few pauper decks and I haven't seen the miscut problem there. So, I guess YMMV.
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I haven't even been able to get a single pack to sleeve a random deck in order to test them. My LGS can't keep them in stock. I do have a friend who ordered some online. He let me check them out and shuffle them when he got them, so I can vouch for the look and the shuffle feel on a small sample size. Just based on that, assuming you could get them for a decent price and there aren't any quality issues between cases when buying that many, it seems like a good sleeve option.
This reply was six months in the making. lol
I would offer an update on the Eclipse sleeves, but there's not much to offer. The unfortunate discrepancy in sleeve height across my cube makes me really dislike them. I can also add that the matte front on the Eclipse sleeves cuts down on glare, but also cuts down on how shiny your foils are. I would recommend Eclipse for miscellaneous decks or as draft sleeves that will hold up for a long time, but I don't think they are great for cubes.
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The best sleeves we've ever had on the cube are KMC Mattes. We replaced those after about three years of use with KMC Hypers about the time that the bad batches were popping up. The Hypers were arguably the worst sleeves I've ever used in terms of quality. We split multiple sleeves every cube night and they were really bad about busting across the bottom. I had good experience with the Eclipse sleeves and using them on various decks, so that's why I went with them for the cube. Obviously that was a mistake, though. If I could just always get those same original KMC Mattes, I'd use those forever.
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Here's the cube with the cards standing up right. You can visibly see the obvious difference in height between the batches.
Under normal circumstances without the height issue, I love Eclipse sleeves. The quality is great. The shuffle feel is great. With this height issue, though, I really dislike them. They feel terrible to shuffle. I've since picked up a few packs here and there that have matched the taller sleeves to try to off set it some, but I sleeved the basics first, so they are all in the shorter sleeves. I've thought about just picking up another case to try to match one or the other, but I really don't need that many extra sleeves.
I posted this pic to the UltraPro Facebook hoping they'd recognize the issue, but I got no responses.
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We got our first draft in after sleeving in the Eclipse sleeves and the look and feel great. The only negative that I'd give them is there are some sizing inconsistencies. I haven't actually gone through and counted to get the numbers and percentage, but just eyeballing, I'd say it's probably somewhere between 20-40 sleeves that were a bit taller than the rest. That's out of 10 total packs, 8 of which were in the same unopened box. The taller sleeves were random throughout and not just from the two packs I bought separate. That's a bit of a bummer.
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I believe KMC was purchased by a different parent company, but they kept all the same branding. Because of that it seems that this parent company has tried to cut costs in some ways and changed the formula. The sleeves themselves still feel really well and the corners hold up great, but it seems the glue they are using just isn't holding up like it used to.
I definitely will. I have high hopes for them.
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Yeah, I did a bit of research on the "best quality sleeves" before I bought enough sleeves for the whole cube. Everywhere I looked the KMC Hypers were getting fantastic reviews. Reddit loved them. People here loved them. The Professor had them ranked at number one on his list and I watched his video where he really put them through the ringer with the stretch test. I had KMC Mattes (not Hypers) on before and they were really good. We'd split one every now and then, but not often, so I fully expected the Hypers to be just as good or better. They shuffle well and feel really good in your hands, but they split like crazy across the bottom. The corners seem to hold up, but I'd be willing to bet that a good third of my cube right now has sleeves that are fully split across the bottom and most of the rest starting to splt. We've had so many split that I'm now out of extra sleeves, which is why I'm buying sleeves. It's been less than two years (last Feb) since we last sleeved, which feels like an incredibly short time considering the amount of money and time it takes to sleeve an entire cube. The original KMC Mattes are now on my secondary cube and still going strong after probably five years or so of use. I'm hoping the Eclipse sleeves hold up to long term use. They look and feel great, I just don't know about their longevity.
For reference this is what's happening. This defeats the purpose of double sleeving in the first place.
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Hopefully the batch your sleeves came from is better than mine. I sleeved my cube in black KMC Hyper Mattes and Perfect Fits last year. They are possibly the worst quality sleeves I've ever had. They feel great to shuffle, but it seems we split several every time we have a cube night. The corners hold up, but they're bad to split across the bottom.
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With all that said, it's possible that I just ended up with a few bad packs when I purchased mine, however, I probably won't be going with Hypers when we upgrade sleeves again.
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