Top Loader vs Card Saver for vintage?

[jchcollins]

I’m not a binder guy, and have about an equal mix of Card Savers and toploaders probably housing my cards that are not graded, (though some of the pricier ones are in One Touch or Pro-Mold mag cases.) Which do I prefer? It probably depends on the day I’m asked, though on paper I think the CS has the edge. Each have their advantages and downfalls, of course. Off the top of my head:

Toploaders:

Good in that they are more rigid than card savers, and that they are clear and showcase the card well. Good in that they are fairly cheap and very easily replaceable if you have an old one that gets scratched or dirty. Bad in that you have to use penny sleeves with them, and if you are loading a bunch of cards or something, this can become cumbersome and frustrating and sooner or later if you aren’t super careful you are going to ding a corner trying to get it into a penny sleeve. Bad in that cards can sometimes still easily slip out of the top if dropped, bad in that a stack of toploaders gets heavy fairly quickly.

Card Savers (both 1 & 2):

Good in that the high-quality ones are usually super clear, and showcase the cards very well. Good in that especially with vintage, there is no need to use a penny sleeve and you can forget about that constant frustration in holding your mouth right while trying to sleeve up dozens of cards. Good in that once the card is seated in a Card Saver, it’s not going to move around at all and generally will not risk coming out of the top of the holder if you drop it. Good in that compared to toploaders, they are much lighter and easier to fit more in a box, etc. Bad in that some people think they are too flimsy, but really - if you’re being careless, you can damage a card in a toploader just as easily as you can in a Card Saver. I think with either, you have to be somewhat intentional about it to bend a card too far or anything like that unless you’re just somehow being super careless. Many people dislike the smaller sized CS2’s for postwar vintage, but to me at least with the post-1957 size, the larger original Card Saver I’s just seem too big. I like the compact presentability and snugness that the smaller size provides for most of the type of cards I collect. CS1’s of course are great for the oversized vintage cards, and for grading submissions. If you want to be super careful, you can also put standard size cards into penny sleeves and then put them into the larger CS1’s… a card sleeved up like that isn’t going anywhere.

I will conclude by saying that I think the largest complaint I hear on the regular about Card Savers is people sometimes have a hard time figuring out how they are supposed to put cards into them. If you just barely grab the lip and try to stuff a card down into the semi-rigid plastic as if it were a toploader, you are going to have a big problem. You have to get the bottom corners of the card into the lip, and then squeeze the sides to kind of make the CS pouch open like an envelope, and then gently wiggle the rest of the card into place. It sounds weird, but again - unless you are just being really rough, you aren’t likely to damage the card.


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