The Mayday Games Blog

Every so often we get a review from a customer about one of our products that really shines. Sure, we get good (and bad reviews) and we appreciate all the feedback. (All of it, the good, the bad and the ugly). We can't improve without every bit of it. But we received this review and we wanted to share it. This shows, not only why our sleeves are great, but why sleeving you cards is so important!

"Without a doubt Magic: The Gathering is an expensive game to play. With the explosive growth in popularity and the relatively low supply of some older cards, it’s no wonder why some cards are literally worth more than their weight in gold. Depending which format you play, you can spend as little as forty to sixty dollars for a top-tier Pauper deck, or up to two to three thousand dollars for a Legacy deck. If you haven’t fainted from the price tag yet, hang on it gets worse. If you started playing Magic since day one and have amassed an enormous collection, or money's no object for you there’s always Vintage where every deck plays one Black Lotus ($6,500) and one of the five Moxes (average price $1200), and decks are well over $10,000. With these kind of prices it’s no wonder why Magic players play the game they love with cards sleeves. Beyond protecting a card to preserve it’s value, there is another reason to play Magic with card sleeves and that’s to prevent marking. Just playing the game is rough on a card, there is all the tapping and untapping, riffle shuffling, and card flicking. All that friction can leave your unprotected cards scuffed up just after a few games. If you’re at a high level tournament you can even be disqualified for having cards marked in any way. It’s just not worth the risk to play without card sleeves. When it comes to card sleeves for Magic there are a lot of choices on the market, and not all card sleeves are equal. On one end there are the high-end precision machined Japanese imported sleeves and on the other end are the low-cost penny sleeves that are really just meant to protect a card while it’s in your trade binder. Most players use the middle of the road opaque colored card sleeves, which Mayday Games offers. Colored card sleeves over great protect while also providing a uniform card back. The colored card sleeves from Mayday Games come in a pack of eighty, which is nice considering your Magic deck consist of sixty cards with a fifteen card sideboard. Compare that to another brand which is similar in quality, but can only be purchased in packs of fifty; it’s ultra annoying. At this point you might be saying that to yourself “These Magic players are insane!” or “If I’m going to spend hundreds of dollars on seventy-five cards, why don’t I just buy the best card sleeves on the market?” Well, there is a dirty little secret about the high-end card sleeves I’m going to let you in on. Dirt, oil, and grime stick to these sleeves making them difficult to shuffle over time. This becomes annoying when you consider you can easily shuffle your deck over three hundred times over the course of a week playing Magic. You still have to replace the high-end card sleeves as often as regular card sleeves. It makes financial sense to save a few bucks here and there and buy quality sleeves,like the ones that Mayday Games offers, that don’t cost an a fortune. I also like to use Mayday Games sleeves when trading Magic cards with others online. I’ve traded several thousands of dollars worth of cards online in the last year, and I’ve used Mayday Games sleeves in shipping my cards out. Mayday sleeves comfortably fit a playset of four cards and still fit within a plastic top loader. These inexpensive card sleeves have also helped me lower my shipping and packing cost as well. None of the hundreds of people I’ve traded with have complained about damaged or missing cards either. This is pretty amazing when you consider how rough the automatic sorting machines are at the post office are on letters with plastic top loaders. I’ve been pretty pleased with Mayday Games' card sleeves durability. I would recommend anyone who’s looking for an inexpensive card sleeve to try Mayday Games card sleeves. They offer the protection I’m looking for with a price that’s hard to beat. Their opaque colored backed card sleeves are great, and well worth the money no matter how you use them."