Why We Sleeve Every Game in the Library

Every game in the Cardboard & Cider library is sleeved. All six hundred of them. This is not something most customers notice until they've visited a cafe where it isn't done and come back to tell us about the difference. Sleeving is the single most time-consuming maintenance task in running a games library, and also the most important.

What sleeving actually means ¶

A card sleeve is a thin plastic envelope that fits over an individual playing card. Most modern board games use cards as a core mechanic, and cards are the component most vulnerable to wear. A card that's been handled by fifty different groups of players will start to show creases, marks, and eventually damage that makes it identifiable from the back, which ruins any game where hidden information matters.

Sleeving a game means fitting every card in the box with an individual sleeve before the game goes on the shelf. For a game with two hundred cards, that's two hundred sleeves, fitted one at a time.

How we do it here ¶

When a new game arrives at Cardboard & Cider, it goes through a three-step process before it reaches the shelf. First, Martin or a staff member plays through it to check the rules and identify any components that need special attention. Second, all cards are sleeved. Third, the box is catalogued in the library index.

After every play session, the game is checked back in and any damaged sleeves are replaced. A game that comes back with a torn sleeve gets re-sleeved before it goes out again. This adds time to the end of every session, but it means the hundredth group to play a game has the same experience as the first.

The cost of not doing it ¶

Games libraries that don't sleeve their cards end up replacing games every year or two. The cost of replacement is higher than the cost of sleeves, and the disruption of pulling a game from the shelf because it's no longer playable is worse for customers than the small delay of sleeving it properly at the start.

There's also a respect argument. People who come to Cardboard & Cider are trusting us to give them a game that works. A marked card in a deduction game, or a bent card in a deck-builder, changes the experience in ways that are hard to recover from mid-session.

If you're building a home library and wondering whether to sleeve your own games, the answer depends on how often they'll be played and by how many different people. For a shared library, there's no real debate.