General Forum

I have a bunch of side-loaders.  Hate them.

For what its worth:

My first sets were put in BCW-9T sheets during the late 80's.  I probably had 500+ pages total.  A dealer whose opinion I valued suggested I switch to Ultra Pro sheets and that was in approximately 1990.  I have all my Topps sets, from 1960-2019 (Series 1) in Ultra Pro Platinum 9 pocket sheets.  I have never found any issues with any of the sheets or problems with the cards. The first Ultra Pro sheets I used would be almost 30 years old now and I see no difference between them and recent sheets purchased almost 2 years ago.  I purchase a case of Ultra Pro sheets about every 3-4 years.

I kept most of the "old" BCW-9T sheets and have placed 3-4 sheets at the front and back of the notebooks, in addition to using sheet lifters.  The BCW-9T sheets have definitely gotten hard and somewhat brittle over time.  I have noticed a very slight yellowing in a few, but not all.

Ditto. My cards have been in pages since circa 1987 and there are no problems. The BCW pages have yellowed, gotten a bit brittle, but no card damage. The Ultra Pros are my favorites. And I, too, hate side loaders, but still have some doing service for old complete sets that I only look at every five years. The cards have been in my air-conditioned house for all but about 10 months, during which they were in an air-conditioned storage area.

But I'm a madman who stores two cards back to back in each sleeve and uses the plastic screwdowns without penny sleeves and have no problems. Ignore my ravings!

v3

Ha ha, I put two cards back o back in my sheets too.  Had no idea until I joined here that that practice was so frowned upon. 

I never cared for the side loaders either.  I found several sheets a few weeks ago and cut them into strips for trade mailing.  I guess I should apologize in advance to my next 20+ trade partners because you'll be receiving your cards in them.