Card Sleeves!

Trading card sleeves are important.  Yes, they are.  They both protect the cards and make them look shiny (if the cards themselves have been scratched up or creased beforehand).

I recently got my hands on 100 counts of this type of card sleeve from MAX Protection:

Oh, dear God, it's perfect.  Not only is it awesome in appearance, but it's also holographic.  This is titled "Manga Witch," which in my opinion, is a very stupid and generic name.  Not that I can think of anything better at the moment.  MAX Protection doesn't manufacture the greatest quality of card sleeves—in comparison to some other brands like generic Ultra Pro and Dragon Shield—but to me, it's definitely one of the most eye-catching (more so than Fantasy Flight).  

What I really want to get my hands on is this:

This is the super rare "Black Lotus Girl" card sleeve.  I think I might have gone across dozens of websites, but all of them mark this product as out-of-stock.  Little did I know at that time, Black Lotus Girl had been out-of-print for years... and it still is.  Even the art versions of card binders are hard to find nowadays.  What a shame.  But don't get me wrong, I'm happy with my Manga Witch for more than one reason.  Not only is it amazing in appearance, but it's also out-of-print, just like Black Lotus Girl.  I actually found mine at the best price at Magic Madhouse, a company in... England.  Maybe there are other sites hiding in the far reaches of the web that also offer good prices for out-of-print card sleeves, but none that I've come across just yet.

That's right.  These babies are quite hard to track down.  Black Lotus Girl, just like the real Black Lotus, continues to elude me.