How often do I need to change card sleeves?

The fact of the matter is; Sleeves will wear over time. Sleeves will get dirty over time. Sleeves will eventually need to be replaced.

Oil from your hands will get onto sleeves and dirt will collect on the sleeves and on the texture of the sleeve. Dirt will tend to collect on the opening of the card sleeve. After lots of shuffles, sleeves will also become worn with time.

Cards will also ‘bacon’ with time and become wriggly, you can see an example here:

While you won’t get kicked from a tournament for baconing sleeves, having very dirty sleeves can potentially get you a match loss if a judge can identify a pattern with the dirt.

If you are playing in tournaments, you may need to change sleeves more frequently than a casual player, it is important that the sleeves you are using can’t be identified from each other, otherwise you risk match losses or disqualification in tournaments. So change sleeves accordingly.

If you are a casual player then you won’t need to change sleeves as frequently, you’ll only ever need to change sleeves when you feel like your old sleeves are too gross to play with, begin to shuffle poorly or potentially split.

Dragon Shield sleeves are built to last! If you want to get more life out of your Dragon Shield sleeves, then check out our guide on how to clean your Dragon Shield sleeves here.