General Forum

For those who use toloaders to store their cards, what do you think about the long term storage of them considering that toploaders are made of PVC?  Won't these toploaders eventually break down?  Not to mention if they do breakdown all that is protecting the card is a penny sleeve?

Isn't PVC what made older pages not archival quality?

Edit:  I meant to type PVC in the title, too late to change it I guess.

Higher end cards I team bag and use BCG boxes. Other then that just boxed.

I wouldn't worried about it. But I guess it could happen. 

I will not worry about them as long as the cards are not stored in the sun. I use PVC for sanitary sewer mains, and there is much nastier stuff in the sewer. PVC's kryptonite are the UV rays from the sun. You should be good as long as you keep the top loaders out of the sun. 

I have been using Card Savers and penny sleeves for 25+ years. Have not had any issues with these breaking down. Most of the current PVC hobby supplies are archival, meaning that they will last for a very long time.  There were some issues with PVC plastic storage supplies in the hobby, but those were mostly solved by about 1990.

Frankly, I am more concerned with leaving the individual cards in direct contact with each other in a box.  I have had issues with various unprotected cards sticking together after a decade or so.

I dont see it being a problem.  You could use a penny sleeve then put it in the top loader.  That works well.

The PVC break down issue was pretty much solved with the creation of better products.  I do have some top loaders and card savers that have yellowed and became brittle, those are mostly on cards that I acquired before 1992. I have replaced them all.  
I would always recommend placing your card in a penny sleeve before placing them in a top loader or card saver.  
Album pages are another issue, before the 90's they were proud to acknowledge that they were PVC pages.  Now most are made with very little or some other "safer" material.

Light, heat, and moisture are the three biggest enemies to cards regardless of what they are stored in. Regarding PVC, I have rescued cards out of PVC pages that were stored away for over 30 years. In my experience, Topps cards on gray cardboard stock fared well, whereas cards on white cardboard stock (e.g. early Fleer and Donruss) had undergone significant yellowing. Also, the acids from old storage boxes cause a yellowing effect of cards on white stock (e.g. storing sets in 800 ct. boxes).

I've been using toploaders with a sleeve for over 30 years. The only issue I had with the oldest toploaders, was that many of them had yellowed. None of them were brittle or cracked though. As long as you keep your cards out of the direct sunlight, you shouldn't have any issues.