How to Protect, Store, and Display Your Cards SCIU EP. #6

what are the best ways to protect store and display your cards today on sports card investor university we're giving you all the info that you need to know [Music] hello sports card investors and welcome to sports card university where we give you all of the basic info you need to know to be a successful sports card collector and investor and today we have an important topic it is how to protect store and display your sports card collection because after all if you are out there buying cards as a collector or for an investment you definitely need to take care of those cards and store them and protect them and display them the right way and we're going to show you how to do that now hey if you guys are excited about this video topic today do me a favor and give this video a like real quick and if you aren't subscribed yet hit that subscribe button and that bell icon right now every subscriber counts alright guys let's go ahead and jump in and get started with how to protect store and display your collection the very first thing you need to start with are penny sleeves the very basics of storing your sports cards starts with penny sleeves and you're going to want to have a lot of these on hand especially if you are opening boxes or buying rock hearts now penny sleeves can be used on their own or they can be actually used as the basis to put into top loaders which i'm going to show you in a minute but these are critical these are critical to protecting your cards and the reason why they're called penny sleeves is because they only cost around a penny so it's a very affordable way to protect your cards they're available in a variety of different sizes you have your standard card sleeves which are for your normal thickness cards such as this one and then you have your thick card sleeves which are available for those thicker cards like those cards that contain patches that come out from more premium types of card collections and it's very easy how these work you simply take your card the easiest way that i found and by the way it is very important that you be careful when putting your card in a penny sleeve because you don't want to mess up the corners or edges of the card that can definitely hurt you if you ever get the card graded in the future so how i do it is i take the penny sleeve in one hand and i put my fingers near the top of the penny sleeve and i pinch i slightly kind of pinch the fingers and rub one over another so it opens up the top of the penny sleeve and then i take the card itself and start by putting in the card diagonally at that type of angle start to put it down in because that protects this corner of the card again you don't want to ding the corners while putting your card into a penny sleeve so you start by going that way that protects that corner and then you start to bring it back and then put it in on that side again making sure that your corners are not making contact at any point with that left or right edge of the penny sleeve and then simply carefully slide the card into the penny sleeve like slow like so that card is now safely inside that penny sleeve and this is a nice form of protection for this card of course penny sleeves are soft so this is nothing that you would ever want to you know ship this card in or anything of that nature if you're looking to store low dollar cards penny sleeves by themselves are a great solution for cards that are a little bit more valuable you're going to want to use more than just a penny sleeve because they are soft and cards still can get damaged when they're inside which brings us to our next topic next let's talk about top loaders top loaders are the next step up in terms of protection of your cards and in fact top loaders and penny sleeves work really nicely together now like penny sleeves top loaders are available in a variety of sizes here i just have a standard size top loader for a standard size card this top loader is 35 point thickness but they're also available in higher thickness levels as well in fact there's a whole variety of different sizes of top loaders measured in a point thickness so there's a hundred point and 130 point and 180 points and 260 point etc which are appropriate for larger styles of cards and in fact some boxes of top loaders such as this one on the back will show you all of the different sizes that they are available in and the different thickness so what you could actually do is you could actually take a thicker card and hold it up to here and see exactly what size of top loaders you would need to buy for that particular card now much like a penny sleeve you want to be very careful when putting a card into a top loader now the top loaders are obviously more rigid that's because they're more protective and so they're a little bit harder to get open you can't just rub your fingers across them i like to kind of put my finger inside and open it that way by by putting my finger inside there to create a little bit of an opening and then i take my card which is already in a penny sleeve you always want to put the card in a penny sleeve before you put it in a top loader very important because this allows it to come in and out nicely from the top loader it also protects the corners of the card so they don't bang against one of the rigid corners of the top loader and get damaged when you have that top of the top loader open start by sliding once again the corner in diagonally by going diagonal you're protecting the corners of the card you're then going to have to remove your finger and slide the rest of the card in like that now you can see what i did just there protected the corners of the card none of the corners touched any of the edges of the card you can gently push the car down don't press on the very top edge of the card when pushing it into the penny sleeve or pushing it into the top loader rather if you push hard on the top edge you can create an issue on that top edge so i like to pinch the card on both sides and slowly push it in like that as i am pinching it but then when you get to this point when the card is almost all of the way in you can no longer pinch and slide it in so what i do is i stand it up on a slot side and i softly bang it against the table and as you can see it is now perfectly in the top loader so that is how you can properly insert a card in a penny sleeve into a top loader and prevent any damage from occurring now sometimes the cards can be a little bit slippery inside the top loader and if it's jostled around a lot sometimes the card can start to come out so if you are shipping a card or if you're just simply worried that the card might be a little bit loose in there one thing you can do is take a little bit of painters tape that blue tape you can buy from a hardware store and put that over the top open edge of the top loader and that will prevent the card from slipping back out that's always a good thing to do if you're going to be shipping a card when you're putting your card into a top loader if you're getting a lot of resistance that it's really hard to get it in there chances are you probably need a bigger top loader but of course top loaders are just one way to protect your cards let's talk about another important way you can protect them it's time to talk about the one touch also known as a magnetic holder the one touch or magnetic holder is really a go-to way for protecting and being able to display a card at the same time these are thicker holders much thicker than a top loader as you can see that gives the card additional protection they're very very rigid so they protect the card quite well and they're also better for display purposes they allow you to display the card a lot nicer they work well on display stands and that type of thing now the way that these work these by the way just like top loaders come in a wide variety of sizes they can be used for your typical thin cards at like a 35 points all the way up to super super thick cards this one here is a 180 point so this would be intended to use for a thicker card the way that these work is they are two pieces of clear acrylic and they are connected by way of a magnet so you would now insert your card in here and notice how it's cut out to protect the corners of the card so that's a nice additional feature of these one touches they can protect the corners of the card once the card's in there you slide the bottom pieces back into the bottom grooves and then slowly allow the top to drop and that magnet right there is what keeps the case sealed now i will also mention because it is only sealed by a magnet it's also somewhat easy for it to pop open so you do have to be careful about that and a lot of people will protect against that if you want to really keep your card in there securely by putting a sticker or piece of tape over top of it so it protects that magnet from popping open that is for example what has been done here with this card this sticker is preventing it from being opened when you attempt if you were to attempt to open it now some people believe that these can occasionally scratch the top of cards and so what some people will do is they will put their card in and then they will actually take a standard penny sleeve lay the penny sleeve flat across the top of the card surface and then with a penny sleeve on top of the card they will then close the one touch again i asked the manufacturer of one of these one touches ultra pro if that was really necessary and ultra pro's advice was if you're simply displaying a card it is not necessary to put the penny sleeve in there if you're going to be shipping the card and the card may be going under adverse conditions when you're shipping it then you may want to do that or you may want to actually ship in a top loader and a penny sleeve within the top loader as that with nice bubble wrap and cardboard around it may provide a little bit better protection overall all right now let's talk about another important way to store your cards particularly if you're going to get them graded if you are ever going to send a card off for grading then you want to put it in one of these known as a card saver or a semi rigid holder and these are also pretty decent holders to protect your cards as well now these are similar to a top loader except there's a few key differences first of all they're a little bit larger than a standard top loader is and second of all they're they're semi rigid so they allow a little bit of movement but the advantage of this is that once your card is in there it tends to be tightly secured which is actually pretty helpful for shipping for example if you're going to ship it off for grading and it's these semi-rigids or card savers that are the preferred way by most grading companies such as psa and bgs and sgc that if you're going to send them your cards they want your cards in these card savers or semi-rigid holders to submit them so how this works is you're going to first put your card into a penny sleeve like we have here and then you're going to take that penny sleeve and just like as if you were putting it into a top loader you would get your finger in there you would open up the top of this so that it creates a nice pocket for you to slide the card into and you're going to lead once again diagonally with a corner going in because as you remember we don't want anything to touch the corners you're going to take your finger out and you can continue to slide it in now it's a little more it's a little tougher to get your card down into the card saver uh because of the fact that they are a little they're just a little more tight against the card in general so once you get the card down to a certain point what you may want to do is press your finger against the two sides of the card or the two sides of the card saver to kind of open it up again a little bit more like that and then that allows you to continue to put that card down into it now unlike a top loader it's actually easier to get your fingers down inside of it so at no point should you ever have to press down on the top of the card you want to avoid that now that card right now is inside that card saver probably would want to put it in a little bit deeper if you're going to ship that off for grading there are other products such as the grade saver pro which actually creates kind of an innovative penny sleeve which has a little tab on the top of it and the advantage of it is that if you were to actually have put the card in this and then put it into a grade saver pro it leaves a little tab out so that you can pull that card back out when it's time for the grading company to pull back out when it's time for grading or you can pull it back out if you want to bring it back out of that card saver the best way to protect your cards may simply be to get them graded now grading doesn't just authenticate a card and give it a condition grade it is also in my opinion the ultimate way to preserve your card for the long run i recommend grading all very high value cards even if the card isn't in good condition now what you can do is ask the grading company not to give it a number grade if you prefer if you think it's going to be a low grade and instead just to authenticate the card and indicate that the card is authenticated and then put it into one of its slabs because ultimately having your card in a slab like this is going to be the best way to protect it now this only makes sense if the card has significant value because the because the process of grading can be expensive but it if it is a card that has a lot of value grading is going to be a great way to protect it of course there's a variety of grading companies for you to choose from like psa and bgs and sgc and csg and by the way if you want to submit your cards to grading the best way to do that is by going to sportscardinvestor.com and clicking on grading in the main menu bar because we have a great grading service that can actually save you money and get you quicker turnaround times with any of those companies there's also companies like vanity slabs that create slabs that you can customize and they're designed simply to protect the card they don't do any type of authentication of the cards at all but whatever direction you go if you're looking for the ultimate protection grading is certainly something i recommend once you get your cards back from grading then i recommend protecting it further by putting a slab strong on it slab strong creates these great rubber bumpers that go around your grated cards and of course what they do is they protect it from damage if it were to ever drop or fall much like how a phone case protects your phone these rubber bumpers protect your slab they also offer some scratch protection for the surface as well they are available in a variety of different colors including clear which is my personal favorite slab strong is a sponsor of the show and they are giving our audience 10 off of anything on their slabstrong.com website by using promo code sci that's promo code sci on slapstrong for 10 off it's a product i highly recommend for your lower dollar cards one way to protect and store them is in a team bag now tea bags are typically used to hold groups of raw cards together in a set they come in a variety of different sizes and they can provide additional protection for raw cards you can also by the way use team bags to put top loaders or even graded cards inside these bags as well as long as you get the right size which can provide some nice scratch protection but what team bags are often used for is if you have a set of lower dollar cards such as these you can put them inside a bag and much like all the other products i've shown you today you want to open up the top of the bag so you're not digging any corners and then you can put these in there softly gently put them down into the bag and then you would take this seal off of the back and seal it over top of the cards like so and those cards are now inside that team bag which is going to keep them together not a high level of protection by any means but certainly better than just putting the cards into a cardboard box and also an effective way to help you organize your cards some collectors prefer to place their cards in a traditional nine card plastic sheet and then place those sheets inside a card album maybe you had some of these as a kid when you were collecting as a kid goodness knows i had a whole bunch these are popular among set collectors who like to keep their cards in an exact order and also to be able to show off an entire set of cards now typically i don't recommend these for cards that have a high value these aren't the most protective way of storing your cards but it is certainly an easy way to display them and for that reason it can be a nice way to store sets as long as they aren't super high end cardboard storage boxes such as this are the most common way for collectors to store the bulk of their cards these typically come in a whole bunch of different sizes from as small as 100 cards to as many as holding 5 000 cards at a time these the larger boxes will be divided into different rows with pieces of cardboard in between some of these types of boxes are meant for raw cards while others are a little bit larger so they can store top loaders or even graded cards as well this is a great solution for bulk storing low value common cards but if you have higher value cards make sure to put them into top loaders before putting them into the cardboard box card briefcases and backpacks are a great way to store your higher value cards including graded cards and they are a must for card shows if you're going to be taking cards to a card show you want to bring it in a briefcase or a backpack for easiest transports as well as protection zeus cases and firebox cases are popular choices but there are many different companies that create these types of products i encourage you to look online and buy one if you have a higher end collection that you want to store and transport some collectors opt to store their higher end cards in vaults through places like golden and pwcc you'll actually ship your cards to them and they will hold them securely in their vault for you this gives you significant added security while also allowing you to easily put up your cards for auction because they are typically combining the vault with a marketplace allowing you to auction your cards directly through their own marketplace oftentimes they will also ensure everything that is in their vault so they will take care of the insurance aspect for you as well i've saved the best for last how to display your cards because displaying cards is a lot of fun if you're collecting cards or if you're investing in cards you're probably going to want to display some cards are an awesome piece of art to be able to show off and to be able to have in your home or office maybe just even to enjoy yourself now two sponsors of this show make incredible display solutions for sports cards which i really want to share with you the first is stand-up displays stand-up displays makes a variety of different card stands to be able to show your cards off by putting these on your bookshelves or or table tops countertops around your home or office they offer stands you can even go as far as getting a custom logo if you want on your card stands stands with variable sizing they can offer and these are really really nice ways to display your collection for lower budget they also offer these pre-packaged stands that come in bulk for either psa graded cards or top loaders or different types of graded cards it's a very economical way for displaying your collection and stand up displays is offering a 10 off promotion for viewers of the show if you use promo code sci on their website their website is standupdisplays.co again that's standupdisplays.com promo code sci for 10 off another display solution that i love and that i use myself is called show your slabs show your slabs makes these incredible wall displays of cards they make these in all kinds of different sizes that allow you to put different size collections up on your wall and these will mount to your wall just like a piece of art we actually have a custom sports card investor display available through show your slabs and they've got a bunch of others available as well if you go to their website showyourslabs.com and use promo code sci you will get 10 off any of their displays again showyourslabs.com promo code sci all right guys i hope you enjoyed this tour through different ways to protect store and display your cards what are some tips or tricks that you might have that you've learned for protecting storing or displaying your cards let us know in the comments below and please give this video a like if you enjoyed it and hit that subscribe button and that little bell icon if you haven't already so we can continue to bring you more content just like this until next time take care everybody [Music] you

Channel: Sports Card Investor

Views: 63,739

Keywords: sports card investor, sports card investing, investing in sports cards, sports cards, sports card, sports card flipping, flipping sports cards, football cards, basketball cards, baseball cards, hockey cards, soccer cards, football card investing, basketball card investing, baseball card investing, football card flipping, basketball card flipping, baseball card flipping

Id: 6jKbPdAIREk

Length: 23min 30sec (1410 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022