Notice that your card sleeves are a little bit on the sticky side of things? Wondering how you can deal with this problem? Read on. We are going to tell you everything that you need to know.
So, how do you make card sleeves less sticky? Well, assuming they are brand new, you can just shuffle them up a little bit. Some new card sleeves tend to be naturally sticky. Other than that, try your best to keep the card sleeves clean.
Read on if you want to find out a little bit more.
How Do You Keep Your Card Sleeves From Sticking Together?
To be honest, it is not uncommon for card sleeves to stick together at the start. This is part of the manufacturing process. The more you shuffle up the cards, the more chance there is of the stickiness being relieved. So, if you find that card sleeves are sticking together, shuffle through them gently a few times and this should sort out the problem.
Some people have also noticed that their card sleeves become a little bit stickier when they are being used in dry environments. It causes some sort of reaction in the card sleeves that causes them to stick to one another.
Of course, using quality sleeves is almost certainly going to help if you are looking to prevent the card sleeves from sticking together. If you are using cheaper penny sleeves, then it is almost guaranteed that they are going to stick together. The higher quality sleeves do not tend to do it all that much.
When you are playing with your cards, try to ensure that your hands are nice and clean. Grease is something that can cause the card sleeves to stick together. It isn’t uncommon for people to eat while playing games with their trading cards, and this can cause them to become stickier.
Other than this, all you need to do is try to ensure that you keep your card sleeves as clean as possible. If you do that, then we are positive that they will barely ever become sticky beyond that initial stickiness that card sleeves often have when you first purchase them.
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Why Do Card Sleeves Get Dirty?
There are plenty of reasons why your card sleeves will get dirty. We are positive that you already know a lot of the reasons why this can happen.
In our experience, some of the cheaper card sleeves on the market can build up a load of static on them. This is going to attract dust.
Of course, higher quality cards are not going to be immune to that dust-gathering if they are stored in a dusty environment. If you can, when your trading cards are not being used, we suggest that you place them into a box or a binder. This will help prevent dust from gathering on the surface.
The main reason why people tend to get dirty card sleeves is that they touch their card sleeves while eating or drinking. As tempting as it can be during a game session, we seriously suggest that you try and keep any food or drink away from your trading cards.
Of course, as long as your cards are properly inside of their sleeves, and we are talking about double-sleeving your cards here, there is very, very little risk of your cards being damaged by all of the filth. However, let’s be honest, why would you want to take the risk of that happening? Keep your card sleeves clean. It will benefit you a whole lot more in the long run.
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Can You Wash Card Sleeves?
You can. However, we wouldn’t really recommend that you attempt to clean your own card sleeves.
The problem with cleaning card sleeves is that there is always the risk of getting water or some other chemical into them. This is going to end up damaging your trading cards.
Since most card sleeves are fairly cheap, it may actually be worth your while just to replace the card sleeves when you can no longer use them. It saves you a lot of headaches,
How to Safely Clean Your Card Sleeves
If you absolutely insist that you should be cleaning your card sleeves, then you will want to take a lot of care when you are cleaning them.
If you can, you should try to remove the card from the sleeve. If it is a valuable card, then try to ensure that you do this as carefully as possible. We are sure that you do not want to end up damaging your card, right?
Once the card has been removed from the sleeve, you can take the smallest amount of water possible and place it onto the end of a microfiber cloth. You can then gently rub the sleeve of the card.
We know that there are a few people out there that may actually want to use some sort of cleaning chemicals to do this. For example, we have seen some people recommend the use of Windex. However, don’t do that. You do not know how it is going to react with the rather thin plastic. It may end up creating tiny holes which, of course, once you place your card back into the card sleeve will result in a load of damage happening to it.
Before you place the card back into the sleeve, make sure it is completely tried out. If you did get any water into the sleeve, then throw them away. It isn’t really worth the risk of putting the card back into it. This is because the only way that the inside of the card sleeve is going to get completely dry is if you separate the opening up and allow it to dry out. Once this happens, the card will no longer fit inside of the card sleeve securely.
Final Thoughts
For the most part, a bit of card sleeve stickiness shouldn’t be a huge problem. It won’t damage the card. It just means you have to be a bit more careful shuffling so you do not bend the card in your haste.
If you are constantly dealing with sticky sleeves, then we suggest that you upgrade the card sleeves that you are using. It tends to be a smaller risk when you have more expensive card sleeves.
Of course, you should always be trying to ensure that you keep your card sleeves as clean as possible. This means storing your cards in a cool, dry location. You should also ensure that you keep food and drink away from the cards.