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Originally posted by KGtheLegend:
I've never heard of MKM sleeves, where do you buy them? A link to the page would be awesome. =)

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I think he meant these, which I use exclusively also.

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Originally posted by AlmostGrown:
I swear by dragon shields.

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I buy Ultra Pro blacks (with the matte finish on the back but not the front) 90% of the time. I buy them because they look new longer. I have comfortably used a set of them in multiple PTQs. I had a single set that looked new after 15 rounds in a GP. They will break, the corners do bend over, but a new sleeve replacing a damaged one typically does not stand out. They can be double sleeved if you get the ultrapro perfect fits.

In 2008 I had found myself in the Czech Republic and one day noticed a few stores carried Magic. Then I discovered not one but two 'local' game shops and fell off the wagon. Hard. Started up with Ultra-Pro 'Knight of Dusk' sleeves as they were on sale and worked well enough for casual play and FNM-level tournaments. This lasted until the company discontinued the 'Knight of Dusk' sleeves. So, I transferred the whole lot (a 504 card cube, 2 extended decks, 4 casual decks and whatever random deck material I had) over to standard Ultra-Pro blue sleeves. Figured that would last awhile. Meanwhile the company was setting me up for another round of sleeve transfer in coming up with the new narrower dimension sleeve. You simply cannot mix the two sizes in a deck without it being noticeable, let alone cards slipping out of your grip if you hold your hand of cards by the edges. Jezis Maria.

Anyway, so I ported the lot over to the new narrower size. In doing so I bought a few packs of sleeves from an internet shop late in 2011. These turned out to be defective interestingly defective. First, I noticed that the clear side was tinted blue. Strange, but nothing terribly so. In sleeving up a deck with these new packs I noticed the colour was coming off on my hands, as if it were merely a lightly applied blue powder. I contacted Ultra-Pro and some meshuggah schmuck named David Wise promised to replace them. Two months went by after this promise was made, and my address supplied, without any replacement product arriving. So I wrote directly to him again without a response at all. I figured 'eh. typical big company crap service' and left it.

In April of this year, nearly two years after David's empty promise I came across our email exchange and got angry about it all over again. More so as I had continued to buy the company's damn products. So I forwarded David's email to the company asking if they would honor their commitment. Liz Velasquez, an employee in the quality assurance, wrote back asking for my address. I gave it again expecting at best to receive exact replacement product, 1 to 1. When the package from Liz arrived I was shocked and quite pleased with the contents and complete turnaround from the previous exchange with David Wise. In my mind the company owed me a mere 6 packs of 50-count blue sleeves. What Liz sent were those sleeves plus an additional 2 100-count packs of blue sleeves, 2 100-count packs of red sleeves, 2 100-count packs of white sleeves (see the colour pattern?) 100 clear sleeves, an Ultra-pro 'Moxes' deck box with matching sleeves and a blue flip-top deckbox, you know, the really rugged posh ones.

I've had extensive experience with Ultra Pro, using them since they only sold clear sleeves. I've never had any issues until recently when I bought a few packs before a PTQ and the sleeves were different sizes, which is an issue with Dragonshields too from what I hear.

Dragonshield I wasn't as familiar with, but a few of the guys from my LGS use them exclusively. They feel kind of weird in my hands though, they're either too slippery or too sticky depending on the color, plus with the way I shuffle I get a lot of peeling on the edges after just a few rounds.

I've heard nothing but good things about KMC, but my LGS doesn't carry them so I will have to order them but good sleeves will be worth it in the long run I think.

Based off the general consensus of this post and a similar post on reddit, I think I will be trying out KMC's Matte Black with Perfect Fits inside.

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Originally posted by paris:
If you're going to double sleeve, you can reduce air bubbles by putting an unsleeved card on top of the perfect sleeve card such that they get put together into the normal sleeve. Then, pull out the unsleeved card (I have a junk normal card dedicated to this task, which I put some tape on to make it easier to pull out). After you've double sleeved several cards, you can also put them on top of each other and press down to get any remaining air out.

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For EDH, I have one deck in perfects fits with clear ultra pro (hard to find nowadays since everything has art on it or is colored), light blue ultra pro with perfect fits (these are lesser quality, one seems to break everytime I play so might be switching it out), and perfect fir with silver dragon shields (very durable)

For limited, I have assorted colors of ultra pros and dragonshields at 45 each.

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Originally posted by KGtheLegend:
I think I will be trying out KMC's Matte Black

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Originally posted by caquaa:
I heard nothing but good things about KMC as well, so I tried these out. I found them to be unsuitable for 9 rounds of a PTQ due to play wear and stickiness. I was told that this doesn't occur w/ other colors, I'm skeptical enough to just stick w/ what works for me.

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The ultro pro matte shuffle very very well for me, but as others have remarked they cut the sleeves at varying heights. So while they are my favorite i should look for a replacement.

Like reading this as well. Since yanomans are endangered ( :P ), I've been looking for good sleeves that keep the top from getting dirty or dinged like ultra pros typically would do. And the inconsistent lengths of dragon shields pushed me away from those as well.