General Forum

I recently acquired a small collection and experienced something new. Many of the cards are in top loader cases. The cases are a yellowish color. Is or was that a thing?? Were they sitting in a hot storage space? Was the collector a smoker? There is no smell to them and the cards are just fine. Anyone ever seen anything like this?

This has been an issue for a few years now. General consensus seems to be there were some cheaply made toploaders that hit the market at some time. Ultra Pro and BCW don’t appear to have this issue. Smoking doesn’t seem to be a contributing factor either.

Pretty common really. I've gotten hundreds over the years. It's the plastic composition. 

Many of top loaders I bought/received in the mid-1980s/early 1990s have yellowed. UV light is often the primary culprit. It's common with cheap plastic that doesn't contain UV stablizers.  

Yes, I've replaced over a hundred of those. Most were from the late 80s, early 90s. All my cards were stored away from the elements. Just not a quality plastic, I guess.

I had (still have) several that I got back in 80s/90s that have yellowed horribly. They were in cradboard boxes. Not exposed to light. Not exposed to smoke (I don't and have never). I use them now in shipping as protection, assuming the recipient will toss them.

I’ve got a ton of them. Just the plastic.

Yea, they were pretty crap top loaders early on and they got jaundice rather quickly. The ones that are in the sun for an extended time also turned yellowish but they became brittle too, I have seen some that are pretty badly cracked because of this. 

Ran into the same problem myself. One thing I noticed is the ones that are stamped "rookie card", or have the colored stripes tend to do it too. For this very reason 99% of the time I now toss any I acquire used. I get nervous when my stash of brand new holders drops to below say a 100, I always buy a minium of 500 at a time.