I know it sounds like overkill but I actually use dragon shields + top loaders right now. That's right, top loaders. I will be adding perfect fits too since some dirt has been getting in still but I was actually considering switching to the ultra pros with the magic the gathering backing (just for aesthetics).
Wow. Why not switch to screw-tight cases? Or have the entire cube PSA graded?
I have pretty mixed feelings about the mini-snap cases. I have my whole cube (and collection) in Pro-Mold Mini-Snaps (http://www.pro-mold.com/pc1.htm). I do not use the ones with the raised edges, but that is not a bad idea. I tested them, but preferred the smooth ones. My experiences with them are as follows:
Advantages: (1) Protects the cards very well. (2) The thicker cases take a little while to get used to, but every card becomes a solid entity and honestly my play group really likes it now it feels to play with card that have some heft to them. Each card really has a cool weight to it, which amakes each move quite meaningful. A bit like Magic Mahjong.
Disadvantages: (1) Shuffling is really annoying. Fine for the cube, but trying to do it with a 60 card vintage deck with lots of search effects is just awful. (2) Stacks are precarious, but splitting the library into two halves makes it work pretty well. (3) If someone drops a case on an edge it can pop open. I thought of sealing each case with a drop of crazy glue in each corner, but I have not done that yet.
Notes: (1) I still put all of my cards inside transparent sleeves inside the mini-snap cases. For this to work EVERY card in the cube has to be NM/M because you can see the backs. This makes it much more challenging to build the collection, but that is part of the fun. There have unfortunately been some cards that I have bought over 10 copies of trying to get just the perfect one because someone did not list the condition accurately for the card back. I use those Japanese KMC inner sleeves inside the cases. (2) When loading the cases, small chips of plastic can be inside. It is rare, but to be on the safe side, I have taken to blowing out the inside of the mini-snaps using a compressed air. You know the ones used for cleaning the inside of a computer. (3) When closing the cases be careful not to crimp any card edges, out of thousands of cards it has happened to be about four times, but it is annoying. (4) Edges can be a little rough on some of the cases. I prefer the Pro-Mold cases to BCW, but I use an exacto-knife to make sure there are no rough parts on the outside of the case, but again beware of chips. (5) In cases, the cube is BIG. I am planning to have a giant custom box with four roll-out shelves with 200 place holders on each level made for the cube, but otherwise it is going to be a beast. (6) I thought about screw-down cases, and even tested some, but even for me, it would have made my collection prohibitively large. (7) With use the acrylic surfaces get scratched and scuffed, which reduced visibility. If you want to go the case route, mini-snaps are the best option, but you have to think carefully about what you are getting yourself into.
Conclusions: Would I do it again this way? Yeah, probably. I have tested the double sleeve method, but for NM/M Beta P9s and Duals, I get nervous, so I like the cases. The next step though will be to crazy glue the corners (but I have to test it first) so they do not accidentally pop open.
In total my collection has 2000 cards (800 for the cube, including those 200 Guru basics) and about 1200 other cards. Everything in the collection is inside the transparent sleeves and Pro-Mold cases, which probably ends up weighting a couple of hundred pounds in total.
I am the first to admit that it is totally impractical. Not slightly impractical. It's ridiculous. I like it in general, but the most frustrating part is with the Vintage Decks and I am seriously considering just building one with some double sleeved Collectors Edition cards so that I can play more. I host a cube draft a couple of times a year and rarely play, so the acrylic cases work fine for me as a collector first and player second. I would love to draft more, but I do not know many people who play. *sniff* So, it all depends on how you feel about authenticity. I love having the real thing, but now that the real cube is complete. I would be fine with proxying all 800 cards using that foil proxy technique (if I knew how) and double sleeving those to play with. I like the idea of being an old man with a glass of cognac and a sheesha breaking out the old school treasure with old friends after an afternoon playing Petanque on the grounds, but most of the time, shuffling up a proxy deck would be fine with me (as long as I knew it was a copy of the original). A Van Gogh forgery on display is only fine if you have the real thing in the vault.
Ultimately, it is hard to recommend the cases, but if you would like to give it a try I think may still have an unopened case of the BCW mini-snaps (possibly with the stackable corners) and I am happy to send you some cases for free to demo (or the whole thing if you want it at cost). Also, if someone new is interested in getting into building there own cube, I am happy to send a core of NM/M cube staples to get you going, just send me a PM.
Incidentally, if someone knows how to proxy up 800 foils send me a PM as well.
Oh, and lastly, I just bought the Commander cards required for the next update and I have the ones for the past couple of sets as well. I was waiting until M12 comes out before I make the big update and re-photograph the cube. So stay tuned.
And I thought Pringles was kidding. Thank you for the report on mini-snap cases, I for one enjoyed reading it.
Someday I have to re-sleeve my cube, that is why I buy different sleeves for limited play now and then. I found Dragon Shields to be too slick, when I cut the deck the cards tend to end up all over the table.
I have one of those. I put my EDH general in it. So I can't really speak to the breakability of the sleeve since it doesn't get shuffled into my deck.
Their breakability wouldn't really matter to me since I do play with top loaders... I guess my concerns are:
Would the perfect fits fit inside them?
Does that annoying hologram ever get in the way?
Is the clarity comparable to the KMC's or Dragon Shields?
It would just be sweet to have magic backs on all my cards... give it more of that magic feel you know?
Their breakability wouldn't really matter to me since I do play with top loaders... I guess my concerns are:
Would the perfect fits fit inside them?
Does that annoying hologram ever get in the way?
Is the clarity comparable to the KMC's or Dragon Shields?
It would just be sweet to have magic backs on all my cards... give it more of that magic feel you know?
I just tested, perfect fits do fit inside of the magic back cards. And pretty much all new sleeves are clear enough for goverment work. I would go for it if you play with top loaders.
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Calvin and Hobbes Cube Tutor
Does anyone have any experience with the Ultra-pros with the magic card art backs? The perfect fits fit in them too right?
They are terrible. The Magic card back art peels off badly. These sleeves caused me to never buy Ultra Pro again (Max Protection sleeves are the best, imo). Like Pringles, the only thing I use them for now is commanders.
The last Ultra Pros I bought had air pockets in the sleeve that would never release. It made the deck I used them on higher on one side. They were pretty awful. I think Ultra Pro was the leader in the industry at one time, but they've been way outclassed now and they aren't even trying to keep up.
wait, you put your cube in perfect fit sleeves, which go into ultra pro's, which go into toploaders?!?
Do you have playmats and satin golves for all drafters as well?
edit: apparently I'm 2 pages behind...
Currently I'm using dragon shields and top loaders but I do plan to add the perfect fits real soon.
We eat, drink, and smoke while cubing. Any my friends and I pretty much do everything in excess. And we literally windmill slam cards (which scares my pet rabbit from time to time).
Seriously though, playing with top loaders is badass. Everything just feels more... powerful.
Currently I'm using dragon shields and top loaders but I do plan to add the perfect fits real soon.
We eat, drink, and smoke while cubing. Any my friends and I pretty much do everything in excess. And we literally windmill slam cards (which scares my pet rabbit from time to time).
Seriously though, playing with top loaders is badass. Everything just feels more... powerful.
Are your players hardcore enough to memorize that stuff? Right now I use an assortment of black sleeves. You can tell the difference between them, but unless you're really studying you can't know what is what. In tournament play they'd be marked, but definitely not with a pattern. That's good enough for me.
Are your players hardcore enough to memorize that stuff? Right now I use an assortment of black sleeves. You can tell the difference between them, but unless you're really studying you can't know what is what. In tournament play they'd be marked, but definitely not with a pattern. That's good enough for me.
I originally sleeved my cube (720 cards + ~250 basics) with black Ultra Pros. I ended up buying two boxes of 750 sleeves on ebay. I think I spent like 6 hours at work one day going from site to site figuring out what the cheepest option was on a price per sleeve basis. I never had any problem with them. Some sleeves busted on me but nothing excessive.
When I went down to 450 cards (+150 basics) I switched to dragonshields. Later I double sleeved them. While almost none of them ever split on me it was 1) more expensive to buy 600 sleeves than the 1500 ultra pros I bought and 2) They very quickly got dirty to the point thatthey stuck together. It was really disappointed considering how much I had spent to sleeve with them. Protip, never buy white sleeves.
When I switched to a proxy cube and MAXIMUM protection was no longer an issue, I just used a mix of the unopened Ultra Pro Sleeves and some of the used ones I had. In the couple of months since I did this one sleeve has broken on me.
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That's the remarkable thing about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse
Calvin and Hobbes Cube Tutor
I originally sleeved my cube (720 cards + ~250 basics) with black Ultra Pros. I ended up buying two boxes of 750 sleeves on ebay. I think I spent like 6 hours at work one day going from site to site figuring out what the cheepest option was on a price per sleeve basis. I never had any problem with them. Some sleeves busted on me but nothing excessive.
When I went down to 450 cards (+150 basics) I switched to dragonshields. Later I double sleeved them. While almost none of them ever split on me it was 1) more expensive to buy 600 sleeves than the 1500 ultra pros I bought and 2) They very quickly got dirty to the point thatthey stuck together. It was really disappointed considering how much I had spent to sleeve with them. Protip, never buy white sleeves.
When I switched to a proxy cube and MAXIMUM protection was no longer an issue, I just used a mix of the unopened Ultra Pro Sleeves and some of the used ones I had. In the couple of months since I did this one sleeve has broken on me.
I'm recently re-sleeving my cube from the old red matte UltraPros to the new size black matte (looks better, sleeve size is noticably smaller).
I've never had a big problem with UltraPros. Maybe a few sleeves split in the past year? I don't cube as much as you guys probably (i.e. not nearly as much as I'd like), so that may factor. But UltraPros have a really good resiliency when actually shuffling them compared to a lot of sleeves I've used, which stick together a lot (lot of surface friction) after initial wearing, so I don't mind at all having to buy $3 extra for 50 extra sleeves to secure against failure, for like forever.
I mostly decided to change up for the color and accumulated dirt, rather than busting.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize at first that the size had changed, so I've got a bunch of the old size and had to buy more of the new. Luckily, black works with any random deck and looks nice.
The new size is especially nice and tight. I don't even know if you could fit perfect-fits into them. I wouldn't want to try.
Japanese Ultra-Pros are the way to go if you use UPs. They were on my cube a LONG time w/o many issues. Currently using KMC matte blue over perfect fits, btw.
Where do people buy their sleeves from? I can only seem to find sleeves in packs of like 100 and they're like $10-$12 for a pack of 100 which seems like quite a lot. Also what do people prefer, KMCs or Dragonshields? I've played with Dragonshields and UltraPros and I hate UltraPros, they always break on me but I was wondering how people liked KMCs.
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MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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Wow. Why not switch to screw-tight cases? Or have the entire cube PSA graded?
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Snap-tites are WAY better, because they have ridges that let you stack them without falling
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I'm pretty sure the guy who only uses Guru Basics has his entire cube in those
Calvin and Hobbes
Cube Tutor
Yep, that's me (http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=279006).
I have pretty mixed feelings about the mini-snap cases. I have my whole cube (and collection) in Pro-Mold Mini-Snaps (http://www.pro-mold.com/pc1.htm). I do not use the ones with the raised edges, but that is not a bad idea. I tested them, but preferred the smooth ones. My experiences with them are as follows:
Advantages: (1) Protects the cards very well. (2) The thicker cases take a little while to get used to, but every card becomes a solid entity and honestly my play group really likes it now it feels to play with card that have some heft to them. Each card really has a cool weight to it, which amakes each move quite meaningful. A bit like Magic Mahjong.
Disadvantages: (1) Shuffling is really annoying. Fine for the cube, but trying to do it with a 60 card vintage deck with lots of search effects is just awful. (2) Stacks are precarious, but splitting the library into two halves makes it work pretty well. (3) If someone drops a case on an edge it can pop open. I thought of sealing each case with a drop of crazy glue in each corner, but I have not done that yet.
Notes: (1) I still put all of my cards inside transparent sleeves inside the mini-snap cases. For this to work EVERY card in the cube has to be NM/M because you can see the backs. This makes it much more challenging to build the collection, but that is part of the fun. There have unfortunately been some cards that I have bought over 10 copies of trying to get just the perfect one because someone did not list the condition accurately for the card back. I use those Japanese KMC inner sleeves inside the cases. (2) When loading the cases, small chips of plastic can be inside. It is rare, but to be on the safe side, I have taken to blowing out the inside of the mini-snaps using a compressed air. You know the ones used for cleaning the inside of a computer. (3) When closing the cases be careful not to crimp any card edges, out of thousands of cards it has happened to be about four times, but it is annoying. (4) Edges can be a little rough on some of the cases. I prefer the Pro-Mold cases to BCW, but I use an exacto-knife to make sure there are no rough parts on the outside of the case, but again beware of chips. (5) In cases, the cube is BIG. I am planning to have a giant custom box with four roll-out shelves with 200 place holders on each level made for the cube, but otherwise it is going to be a beast. (6) I thought about screw-down cases, and even tested some, but even for me, it would have made my collection prohibitively large. (7) With use the acrylic surfaces get scratched and scuffed, which reduced visibility. If you want to go the case route, mini-snaps are the best option, but you have to think carefully about what you are getting yourself into.
Conclusions: Would I do it again this way? Yeah, probably. I have tested the double sleeve method, but for NM/M Beta P9s and Duals, I get nervous, so I like the cases. The next step though will be to crazy glue the corners (but I have to test it first) so they do not accidentally pop open.
In total my collection has 2000 cards (800 for the cube, including those 200 Guru basics) and about 1200 other cards. Everything in the collection is inside the transparent sleeves and Pro-Mold cases, which probably ends up weighting a couple of hundred pounds in total.
I am the first to admit that it is totally impractical. Not slightly impractical. It's ridiculous. I like it in general, but the most frustrating part is with the Vintage Decks and I am seriously considering just building one with some double sleeved Collectors Edition cards so that I can play more. I host a cube draft a couple of times a year and rarely play, so the acrylic cases work fine for me as a collector first and player second. I would love to draft more, but I do not know many people who play. *sniff* So, it all depends on how you feel about authenticity. I love having the real thing, but now that the real cube is complete. I would be fine with proxying all 800 cards using that foil proxy technique (if I knew how) and double sleeving those to play with. I like the idea of being an old man with a glass of cognac and a sheesha breaking out the old school treasure with old friends after an afternoon playing Petanque on the grounds, but most of the time, shuffling up a proxy deck would be fine with me (as long as I knew it was a copy of the original). A Van Gogh forgery on display is only fine if you have the real thing in the vault.
Ultimately, it is hard to recommend the cases, but if you would like to give it a try I think may still have an unopened case of the BCW mini-snaps (possibly with the stackable corners) and I am happy to send you some cases for free to demo (or the whole thing if you want it at cost). Also, if someone new is interested in getting into building there own cube, I am happy to send a core of NM/M cube staples to get you going, just send me a PM.
Incidentally, if someone knows how to proxy up 800 foils send me a PM as well.
Oh, and lastly, I just bought the Commander cards required for the next update and I have the ones for the past couple of sets as well. I was waiting until M12 comes out before I make the big update and re-photograph the cube. So stay tuned.
And I thought Pringles was kidding. Thank you for the report on mini-snap cases, I for one enjoyed reading it.
Someday I have to re-sleeve my cube, that is why I buy different sleeves for limited play now and then. I found Dragon Shields to be too slick, when I cut the deck the cards tend to end up all over the table.
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
I stick with KMC which are flat.
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I have one of those. I put my EDH general in it. So I can't really speak to the breakability of the sleeve since it doesn't get shuffled into my deck.
Calvin and Hobbes
Cube Tutor
Their breakability wouldn't really matter to me since I do play with top loaders... I guess my concerns are:
Would the perfect fits fit inside them?
Does that annoying hologram ever get in the way?
Is the clarity comparable to the KMC's or Dragon Shields?
It would just be sweet to have magic backs on all my cards... give it more of that magic feel you know?
I just tested, perfect fits do fit inside of the magic back cards. And pretty much all new sleeves are clear enough for goverment work. I would go for it if you play with top loaders.
Calvin and Hobbes
Cube Tutor
They are terrible. The Magic card back art peels off badly. These sleeves caused me to never buy Ultra Pro again (Max Protection sleeves are the best, imo). Like Pringles, the only thing I use them for now is commanders.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
Currently I'm using dragon shields and top loaders but I do plan to add the perfect fits real soon.
We eat, drink, and smoke while cubing. Any my friends and I pretty much do everything in excess. And we literally windmill slam cards (which scares my pet rabbit from time to time).
Seriously though, playing with top loaders is badass. Everything just feels more... powerful.
How do you shuffle?
360 Unpowered Cube | Cubetutor
Very carefully.
EDH Decks:
- Reya Dawnbringer // - Mistform Ultimus // - Balthor the Defiled // - Urabrask the Hidden // - Mirri, Cat Warrior
I originally sleeved my cube (720 cards + ~250 basics) with black Ultra Pros. I ended up buying two boxes of 750 sleeves on ebay. I think I spent like 6 hours at work one day going from site to site figuring out what the cheepest option was on a price per sleeve basis. I never had any problem with them. Some sleeves busted on me but nothing excessive.
When I went down to 450 cards (+150 basics) I switched to dragonshields. Later I double sleeved them. While almost none of them ever split on me it was 1) more expensive to buy 600 sleeves than the 1500 ultra pros I bought and 2) They very quickly got dirty to the point thatthey stuck together. It was really disappointed considering how much I had spent to sleeve with them. Protip, never buy white sleeves.
When I switched to a proxy cube and MAXIMUM protection was no longer an issue, I just used a mix of the unopened Ultra Pro Sleeves and some of the used ones I had. In the couple of months since I did this one sleeve has broken on me.
Calvin and Hobbes
Cube Tutor
I'm recently re-sleeving my cube from the old red matte UltraPros to the new size black matte (looks better, sleeve size is noticably smaller).
I've never had a big problem with UltraPros. Maybe a few sleeves split in the past year? I don't cube as much as you guys probably (i.e. not nearly as much as I'd like), so that may factor. But UltraPros have a really good resiliency when actually shuffling them compared to a lot of sleeves I've used, which stick together a lot (lot of surface friction) after initial wearing, so I don't mind at all having to buy $3 extra for 50 extra sleeves to secure against failure, for like forever.
I mostly decided to change up for the color and accumulated dirt, rather than busting.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize at first that the size had changed, so I've got a bunch of the old size and had to buy more of the new. Luckily, black works with any random deck and looks nice.
The new size is especially nice and tight. I don't even know if you could fit perfect-fits into them. I wouldn't want to try.
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-AA
I use descriptive language. Assume that I'm being nice and respectful. (I'll tell you when I'm not.)
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