Does anyone know how many sleeves, or packs of card sleeves, are needed to sleeve the complete Arkham collection. That is Arkham Horror + all 8 expansions?

At the moment I'm only toying with the idea. I'm a solo gamer and pretty careful with how I handle the cards anyway, so I'm not sure how necessary sleeving is. Any opinions in this issue?

The thought only occured to me last week when I noticed a little bit of wear on few of the monster tokens. They are in a bag together and get jostled around a little, so a bit of scuffing is inevitable. I solved this problem with a pack of 200 coin envelopes that only cost me a few pounds. A very cheap and effective protective measure in my opinion.

Today I started searching for card sleeves and my jaw dropped when I saw the prices! Most sellers are asking somewhere around £1.60 per pack, which sounds very reasonable until you notice the avg. £5.00 delivery charge per pack!

To put it into perspective you could buy a brand new mint copy of Arkham for the cost of a mere 5 packs of official FFG card sleeves. Yikes!

At the moment I think I will continue to be careful.

I think it's somewhere between 2300 and 2400 cards coming in two sizes. It would indeed be a sizable expenditure to sleeve them all so unless you're a very heavy player or not too careful ( and it always gives me a laugh when I see these online pics of people playing with their game with soda cans and glasses right next to the board just dying to be knocked over) I wouldn't bother. Getting replacement cards for the set you might someday wear out probably will be the cheaper option.

If you follow this link you'll be redirected to the Arkham Horror minisite where, for each expansion, the total number of sleeve packets is specified. The investment is consistent, indeed; I think it heavily depends on how often you play the game, and the "environmental conditions" around. As Jackman said, if you eat snacks and drink coke while playing... well, better sleeving. If you plan 300-400 games before the game becomes boring, then again, better sleeving.

As for me, i sleeved everything, and laminated AOs, Heralds / Guardians / Institutions & Investigators, and I never regretted it

Lee,

It will set you back about $100 for the sleeves and you can get them at a discounted rate through CoolStuff which advertises with almost every click on BGG. Two bottles of wine and two 4-hour sessions and my girlfriend and I sleeved every card...good times!

Cheers,

Joe

Thanks for the replies guys.

After a bit of thinking and a bit of math I've come to the conclusion that sleeving is not a realistic option for me. For the complete Arkham collection (all brand new) I paid somewhere in the region of £200 to £250. To sleeve all the cards it would cost roughly £380 . For that I could buy a second set of Arkham, with money to spare! I'm not exactly short of cash, but I think I will pass.

But the fact is that I have been very careful so far. (It's one of those things that was drilled into me as a child. ) All my cards still look brand new. I don't bring food or drink near the board, and I don't store it in a damp place or near a heat source. The only minor wear I have spotted so far has been light scuffing and splitting of a few monster markers. I've solved that little problem with coin envelopes, and they look absolutely fab now. Although individually stretching almost 200 envelopes and gently squeezing monster markers inside isn't something I want to do again in this life.

The one thing you should try to find a solution for is the monster and investigator stands. They definitely damage your counters and I myself am looking for a solution other than extensive hand modifications to the plastic--too much work for me. Anyone know where to get better ones?

Man, that's a lot of money! I did the math on the sleeves I used (FFG ones) and I got a total of 142.5 EUR. Which is quite a lot, but really far from your total.

I checked from an English site (boardgamecity.com) and got the following: big cards (green label) comes for 2.29 each; small cards (yellow label) come for 1.99 each. The grand totale (34 green, 22 yellow) for all expansions plus base game is 123.33 £.

Clearly, not pushing for you to sleeve, just saying (amazon has insane prices for sleeves, dunno why)

The one thing you should try to find a solution for is the monster and investigator stands. They definitely damage your counters and I myself am looking for a solution other than extensive hand modifications to the plastic--too much work for me. Anyone know where to get better ones?

I haven't noticed any damage. When I got Arkham and the big box expansions I fitted the stands to the investigator markers and have never removed them. I can't see a reason why I would want to remove them either.

Do you use the stands for the monster markers too? I thought they were for the investigators only.

The one thing you should try to find a solution for is the monster and investigator stands. They definitely damage your counters and I myself am looking for a solution other than extensive hand modifications to the plastic--too much work for me. Anyone know where to get better ones?

I will say that it's best to just not use the stands for the monsters. I have friends who use them with their set, but I find just leaving the counter flat does less damage. It's not as useful to keep them in stands as investigators, since monsters don't get delayed.

The investigators work better if you can store them basically permanently seated, but I can understand if this creates a storage problem.

Clearly, not pushing for you to sleeve, just saying (amazon has insane prices for sleeves, dunno why)

I think Amazon impose fixed delivery charges on third party sellers. It's how they take their 'slice off the top' on any transaction through their site.

I did check out some of the non-FFG sleeves. But there seem to a lot of bad reviews, so I don't think I will take the chance.

The one thing you should try to find a solution for is the monster and investigator stands. They definitely damage your counters and I myself am looking for a solution other than extensive hand modifications to the plastic--too much work for me. Anyone know where to get better ones?

I haven't noticed any damage. When I got Arkham and the big box expansions I fitted the stands to the investigator markers and have never removed them. I can't see a reason why I would want to remove them either.

Do you use the stands for the monster markers too? I thought they were for the investigators only.

Your way is the way I think it is meant to be done Lee, but some of us take the stands off for easier/less bulky storage, and some people like to put monster counters in stands. The stands aren't really meant for the monster counters, although the will fit (it's all the same thickness). Repreatedly taking them on and off will damage components though.

Your way is the way I think it is meant to be done Lee, but some of us take the stands off for easier/less bulky storage, and some people like to put monster counters in stands. The stands aren't really meant for the monster counters, although the will fit (it's all the same thickness). Repreatedly taking them on and off will damage components though.

Oh, I see. I can understand the storage angle, but it never occured to me to use the stands with the monsters. I just automatically assumed that because the stands 'pinch' the markers they were meant to be fitted once and that was it.

File or cut away the "teeth" on the stands (a paper cutter does it), then cut a small piece of the auto-adhesive felt you put under chair legs and table legs to make the neighbors happy and stick it in the stand in place of the teeth. Voila, no more tearing of your markers.

Anyway, in the beginning I used to put monster tokens (at the time still un-sleeved) in the stands, but then I realized it was just easier (and created less wear) to leave them flat on the board. You know, for those situations when a couple of surges flood the board with monsters and you have no option but to stack them on top of one another

Aye, it definitely helps with the dreaded token pileup.

I sleeved all the cards, including GOO's and Investigators. It paid for itself one night when a cup of coffee I was drinking spilled into the card storage container I was using at the time. It saved every card. I would have had to buy everything over and that wasn't possible. Here's what I worked with (from Amazon):

There are 959 small cards

There are 1456 normal cards

For the GOO and Investigators I used Ultra Pro 5" x 7" Soft Sleeves (100) $4.93

For small cards I used Mini Euro Game Play Card Sleeves (100 Sleeves/Pack - 45 MM X 68 MM) $1.75

For normal size I used 10 (Ten) Packs of 100 Sleeve(s) (Penny Sleeves) per PacK (currently $10.99 normally under $10/1000...that's why they call them 'penny sleeves'

Prices have varied a little but it cost me less than a big box expansion to do it. I'm not a big fan of sleeves but I am very glad I sleeved mine. Those include the shipping through Prime or included by the shipper.

So total price (with extras left over)

small=$17.50 (10 packs)

normal=$16 (2 boxes/1000 per box)

Large=$5 ( 1 pack)

Total $38.50

NOTE: The size sleeve often recommended for the small cards is incorrect from many companies and the cards don't fit. The Mayday 45x68s were the best fit for the money.

Hmm... much less than I expected. Could you post where you got these prices?

Here's a question, though:

Are your cards that are sleeved easy to shuffle? In my experience, most sleeves make it nearly impossible to do a thorough shuffle job. If anyone can point out a brand of sleeves that work great for shuffling, that would be delightful!

Always used FFG sleeves, always had zero probs with shuffling: they are thick and smooth enough to easen the job. I don't have such a big experience with other factories' sleeves, so I can't really talk about the others. But FFG are good (for me, at least; I've heard from friends sayin' they don't like them, because they are too thick)

Hmm... much less than I expected. Could you post where you got these prices?

They all came from Amazon. I even bought the FFG tarot size for ES from Amazon. Those were expensive and not packed in 100s but 50s so you had to buy two packs for the game. The small cards are the same as AH.

And yes, sleeving any card with any sleeve does add to the difficulty in shuffling. But I think of that cup of coffee and I don't mind

If I can get the stuff that cheap I may sleeve everything.