It’s time to protect those rare Pokemon cards from even the slightest mark or crease as we check out the best toploaders for trading cards!
Trading cards have been around in one form or another for a very long time, but it’s only in recent years that collectors, traders and players of trading card games have caused a massive explosion in the need for their card collections to be protected.
This means that there’s a huge number and variety of protective products on the market that’ll take care of your trading cards, with rigid toploaders being the best option if you have any expensive or particularly rare cards in your collection.
The value of cards can reach four figure sums or in some cases, much more. Seriously, prepare to have your jaw dropped if you check out our rare Pikachu cards list, which goes to show why protection for trading cards is so important to many collectors.
If you do have any of the most rare Magic The Gathering cards or some of these rare Pokemon cards, you’re definitely going to be wanting to take a look at this list!
Which toploaders are the best though?
Let’s find out, as we check out the best toploaders for trading cards!
1. UltraPro Premium Clear Toploaders
With Ultra Pro being such a reliable, respected and popular brand when it comes to protecting trading cards, it’s no surprise that we here at Retro Dodo recommend their standard clear Toploaders as the number one choice on our best Toploaders for trading cards list.
Why do they occupy the top spot on this list though?
Simple: Ultra Pro always produce high quality Toploaders that are consistent, solid and reasonably priced.
There’s almost certainly no better assurance of reliability than Ultra Pro.
These particular Premium Toploaders are acid-free (so your cards won’t become discoloured from long term storage) and clear in terms of their transparency.
Which means that there’s no issue of clarity when it comes to being able to view the cards being protected by these toploaders.
So not only are Ultra Pro products so consistently high quality, but they tend to be widely and readily available too, in numerous pack sizes – so you can be sure to find enough whenever you need to protect those high value cards (such as the most valuable McDonalds Pokemon cards!)
2. Quiver Toploaders
One of the best trading card toploaders I own is by a company called Quiver. They are well known in the USA, but not so much here in the UK because of the shipping prices.
But that aside, these are great toploaders that fit sleeves cards incredibly well. Each one holds the card very tightly, with close to no chance of falling out if thrown, dropped or aggressively handled.
The toploader is ued with a type of plastic that hides fingerprints too, making it a sleek toploader to use for your valuable collection.
They have a 28 pack which comes with free penny sleeves too which is a nice freebie!
3. VaultX Rigid Toploaders
Though they can be pretty expensive, these VaultX Rigid Toploaders are another solid choice for gamers or collectors looking to take good care of their rare and valuable trading cards.
We found that cards aren’t particularly easy to remove from these toploaders. but to a certain extent that’s true of many toploaders.
And given the types of cards likely to be displayed in them, it’s not likely that you’re going to want to be moving them in and out of these protective shells either!
In fact, we at Retro Dodo liked them so much that you’ll even find these VaultX toploaders on our best Magic: The Gathering sleeves list too, which is an incredibly useful list if you’re looking for sleeves that’ll allow you to actually play with, rather than just store or display, your trading cards!
4. 3D Protect Toploaders
3D Protect are not well known, but i was honestly impressed with the quality of their top loaders after testing them, especially when you consider a box of 25 only cost me £7.
They fit your regular 3″ x 4″ cards, meaning you can fit them in loose, or in sleeves (which we reccomend).
The corners have been rounded to remove any sharp objects and any chance of scratching cards. The sides have also been sanded, making them smooth and removing any small bits of plastic.
They plastic used is a high gloss, and is darker than most top loaders on this list, but i couldn’t see any close up effect of it distorting the beautiful art that your trading cards like to show off.
It’s just an all round, cheap, affordable, decent top loader for those not wanting to splash out.
5. BCW Toploader Card Protectors
Known as a reliable and trustworthy brand in the world of comic book and even just photo storage, naturally BCW’s trading card protection solutions are very dependable too.
They’re well made and can be purchased in larger packs too, so if you have a particularly sizable collection of cards and want some uniformity in the toploaders you’re using, these BCW toploaders are a good option.
They’re not always cheap and supply (particularly in the UK) can be a little inconsistent, but these BCW toploaders provide excellent protection for the rarest, most desirable and most important trading cards in your collection!
Even better: this particular option comes with 100 soft sleeves too, so you can also take care of the slightly less precious cards in your collection.
Note that, as with other toploaders on this list, these are standard sized but will also suffice for smaller, Yu-Gi-Oh sized cards. Why not check out our list of rare Yu-Gi-Oh cards while you’re here?
If you have any of those, you’ll definitely need to invest in decent toploaders for your cards!
6. MintKeeper Toploaders – Standard Trading Card Size
A rising star in the realm of trading card protection, MintKeeper sleeves and toploaders are definitely gaining some significant popularity at the moment.
Partly, that’s because they’re affordable and – importantly – they’re pretty much always available.
We collectors know that it sucks when you have to try out a new brand of toploaders, with the uncertainty of whether or not they’ll compare to your preferred brand often being a bit anxiety inducing!
So the fact that MintKeeper cards are generally readily available – whenever they’re needed – is a massive plus in our opinion.
Do be warned that these toploaders actually have a slight blue tint – they aren’t perfectly clear – but other than that, these MintKeeper toploaders are a great choice, particularly if you have a large or ever increasing collection of cards to keep safe!
7. Savita Toploader Card Protectors
There’s an awful lot of non-branded – or at least non-recognisable, non-household name – manufacturers of toploaders for trading cards out there.
Many of them can be pretty unreliable – but here at Retro Dodo, we’ve actually found that these Savita toploaders are a lot more consistent and high quality in comparison to many of the other unfamiliar (and cheap!) options out there.
They also have all of the features you’d expect from branded toploaders too – such as a narrow opening, solid construction and friction-resistance too.
The biggest selling point for these toploaders is of course their price. They’re a lot more affordable than many of the bigger brands that most gamers and collectors are familiar with.
That said, with the protection of precious and valuable trading cards at stake, it is often worth shelling out a little more to ensure that you’re getting the right protection for your needs.
So let’s take a look at what other brands of toploader we’d recommend you use to take care of your trading cards!
Jason – who lives in the UK – has had a lifelong interest in video games, which all started when he discovered Space Invaders in the early 80s. The first game he ever completed was Wonder Boy in Monster Land on the Sega Master System – which remains one of his proudest gaming achievements. Jason is a passionate writer – and has been writing about gaming since the late 90s. He currently runs pop culture blog midlifegamergeek.com, which he updates on a daily basis (and has written more than 700 articles on the blog alone!).
Outside of video games, Jason is a keen tabletop gamer, film buff and comic book fan.
