Changed my tune on card sleeves after one ruined deck

I always thought card sleeves were a waste of money for casual board games. Then my cat knocked over a soda and a few cards from my Coup set got sticky and warped. I spent $8 on a pack of 100 clear sleeves to test them out. Now I can play drinks on the table without panicking. Anyone else have a game get wrecked that made you change a habit?

3 comments

3 Comments

jenny_hall18d ago

Not gonna lie feels like overkill for Coup of all games but you do you. I get being mad about a ruined deck but spending money on sleeves for every casual game seems like a slippery slope.

adamthompson18d ago

My friend Dave once spent like forty bucks on a humidor just to store his copy of Love Letter because he was convinced the moisture was gonna warp the cards. He kept it in there for like six months until one day we opened it up and the whole thing smelled like cedar wood and the cards had this weird oily residue on them. We still play with that deck and every time someone picks up a card you can smell the wood chips. Kinda funny how much effort we put into protecting these things when they're just gonna get beat up anyway.

tylerj2218d ago

Jenny, I get where you're coming from, but I read this blog post once from a guy who runs a board game cafe. He said he sleeves everything now, even his copy of Uno, because replacing one deck costs way more than a pack of sleeves. For Coup specifically, the cards get handled a lot during bluffing and pointing, so they pick up grime fast. My experience is that eight bucks for sleeves is cheaper than hunting down a replacement deck or printing a new one. Plus, you can pull them off and reuse them on another game later. Your mileage may vary, but I wouldn't call it overkill once you've seen how fast a game wears down from normal play.