General Forum

Hi everyone,

I just have a pretty simple question. The 2 major companies for collecting supplies are BCW and Ultra Pro. Do any of you know the real difference? I've always preferred Ultra Pro for 9-pocket pages and One-touch plastics. But, on the other hand, most of my toploaders and acrylic storage boxes tend to be BCW.

The prices are very similar, but is either quality better than the other? Have any of you noticed quality control issues? Price differences? Selection?  Just curious to get some of your feedback on your personal excperiences.

Thanks guys!

 Back when I actually had card shops anywhere near where I live, they always pushed Ultra Pro.  Each and every one of them said UP was superior to everyone else, but that was a long time ago, and there were many more competing companies.  I still prefer Ultra Pro myself, and have never actually seen BCW in my area, but that could be due to the fact that there are no card shops and all supplies come from stores like Walmart and Shopko.  Although I guess that does say something that all of the retail stores in my area that carry cards and card supplies all carry Ultra Pro only.

 I have both brands of pages holding my collection safe and sound as well as some cheaper knock off stuff I am slowly weeding out.  My finding is that BCW isn't as clear as Pro but pro isn't as durable.  so really you have to choose.  clearer display or holds cards longer.  

 I go to my card shop and buy a 9 pocket page from a company called Max Protection.  I really like them and I have never had any issues with their product.  As for Ultra Pro, they are top of the line and I like to use them whenever possible and if I can't grab the Max Protection from the shop.  I also, have used pages from a company that comes in a black polybag sold at Fred Meyers and I up until this last pack, I have had no issues.  This last group I bought probably half the package had an issue where the middle section was about 1/2" lower and therefor created a lid on the bottom section of the page making it hard to put cards in.  I wish I could find the name of the company as those pages are be the one I would avoid and say are lower quality.

We have both as well, and I just prefer the Ultra Pro Platinum better than BCW. Around here, BCW costs much less than UP.

 I use them both.  As well as Pro-Mold.  Don't really have a prefrence.  

 I use both in holding my cards. I haven't had any issues. With sheet I use several different brands but they have to be study like the ultra pro sheets.

You guys don't just throw all your cards in a shoebox like we did back in the 60's?  In all seriousness, my way of "preserving" my cards back then was this thing my mom got me that looked like a locker.  It had a door for each baseball league and when you opened a door there were separate slots for each team.  Each slot could hold maybe 25 cards, so that's what I brought with me to adulthood - roughly 25 cards for each team.  All the rest either got thrown out or were put in my bicycle spokes to make that cool motorcycle sound.

As for what sheets I use; Ultra Pro - mostly because that's what's available and I've never looked into anything else.

My brother and I had a couple of those Locker card box things. They were hard plastic. One was red the other blue (I think I had the blue one) there were also some label stickers for the "shelves" 

Mine was green and the team names were on the inside of each door and were raised plastic.  I remember it annoyed me because one of the shelves said "Seattle Pilots"  and I couldn't change it when they jumped ship to Milwaukee a year later.