General Forum

Is anyone here familiar with the BCW Pro Pages? I know most people like Ultra Pro Platinums, but I am curious how these stack up against them. I prefer pages that are more thick and solid feeling vs some that are crinkly and floppy. 

At the advice of a sage collector here, I have been using BCW boxes strictly to hold my collection. For whatever reason though, my cards, especially newer ones, seem to be warping either forwards or inwards. I have tried packing them tighter, more lose, everything and it seems that gravity still wants to slightly warp them.

I am thinking about going back to using D ring binders. However, pages are expensive, and I found a place called baseball card king that sells the BCW Pro Pages by the case for a pretty good deal. I just don't want to spend over 100 bucks for 1000 pages and find out they are crinkly and floppy. 

Any advice? 

1000 pages for $100 is a really good deal these days.  I typically get 3 boxes for $45.  I've use both brands of pages, and although I haven't had any problems with either of them, I prefer Ultra-Pro Platinum.  I store them in 1" binders for $0.99 each.  A complete baseball card set can fill 2-3 binders.  I have about 180 of these binders full (up to 40 pages each, or about 7000 pages overall).  

I sleeve my cards and then put them in pages.  The BCW pages seem to have narrower pockets that tend to squeeze the sleeves width-wise and cause them to wrinkle.  The Ultra-Pro pages typically allow everything to lay flat, giving the display a cleaner look.  That is the reason I prefer the Ultra Pro pages over the BCW.  Other than that, the construction of the BCW pages seems fine.

-Tom

I was told back in the 70s that a slight curve of the card is perfectly normal and is actually helpful in indicating that the card is in high-grade condition. Packing cards too tightly can actually damage them (putting them in, taking them out, or having them stick to each other).

As for BCW pages, I'm not really a fan. I have some in sizes that apparently Ultra-Pro doesn't seem to make, o I'm kinds stuck using those. I got a case of BCW 9-pocket pages from a LCS (who kinda did a bait and switch on me, I wasn't happy) and at least the top page in each 100-count box (10 boxes per case) was folded over at the top where it was mispacked or something. Granted, that's only 1-2% of the case, but that's still disappointing to have any pages that are unusable. The actual quality of the pages themselves just don't seem to be as high as the Ultra-Pro pages. I found that some pages when putting cards in would split at the seams. I am not a rough person! Having been collecting cards since 1978, I think I'm more gentle with paper than anyone. If I can pop a seam sheeting cards, the page was not sealed properly. That's been my experience with BCW.

I used the BCW pages when I first started collecting in the early 90's. They were pretty much the only thing out there to ue. The pages are now solid plastic and with some oil gloss. I'll never be able to get the cards out of them with out destroying the cards. The cards are all in binders in a wooden storage cabinet away from heat or cold temps. I got lucky, most of the cards are from the junk era of collecting. Now I buy 3 or 4 boxes of Ultra-pro pages.

So, would you guys say that cards slightly curving is normal? Like I said, I notice that it's mostly cards from newer releases. My 2013-14 Panini and 14-15 Donruss cards seem to be the biggest offenders. The 2017 Topps baseball is curving inwards as well. The only reason I am considering going pack to albums is the curving. I prefer the cost and space usage of using strictly boxes. I keep them in a closet in an air conditioned house so I am not sure why this is happening. 

Curving of the paper is completely normal. Certain types of paper curl more than others. Cards from the 1970s really curve (front being the convex side).

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Well since it sounds like the slight curving of cards isn't such a big thing to worry about, I'm probably going to just stick with using boxes exclusively.

It sounds like those old pages were not PVC-free.  I remember that coin storage supplies all went PVC-free in the mid- to late '80's.  Maybe the card hobby was later to adopt 'archival grade' as a storage supply standard.  I haven't seen any sleeves or pages sold in the last fifteen years that were not explicitly marked as PVC and Acid free, so they should never exhibit the same degradation that the older plastics did.

-Tom

The newer Ultra-Pro pages are "floppy" b/c the plastic is thinner so that they can accommodate thicker cards without damaging the cards or pages. Once a page is full, it doesn't seem as floppy as it did right out of the pack. Even many of the current memorabilia cards can now fit in their pages. You can't replace them with thinner cards later on though b/c the thin cards will slide right out. Structurally, the UPP pages still hold up as well as they did in the past when the pages were thicker. I still prefer UPP pages over any other brand.