You’ve got the inner sleeve game covered, switching out every paper sleeve for any of the previously mentioned alternatives but…there’s more. Jackets are prone to wear from being over-handled or poor storage practice but maintaining their structure and design with the addition of an outer sleeve isn’t a bad idea. Depending on the level of obsessive-compulsiveness you suffer from your records may all wind up in tidy little plastic sleeves after reading this article.

I self-diagnosed myself about a 7 on the OCD scale for record collectors mostly because the chore of cataloguing and storing records appeals to me as much as buying and listening to them. Every purchase triggers a series of events. New outer and inner sleeves first and maybe a cleaning if the disc looks at all dirty. Depending on the record shops you go to, outer sleeves may or may not be placed on each new and used record or offered at the counter. These generic sleeves are great for the most part but they’re cloudy looking and  have a tendency to deteriorate over time, becoming more opaque than translucent.

From a protective standpoint, a cloudy outer sleeve is still serving a purpose; dust and other elements are further isolated from the disc surface which is almost all you can do. I got tired of looking at a cloudy jacket though, and when added up in quantity they amounted to a few hundred dollars which made even less sense. Spending money on something with a well-known defect? Nope. Re-sleeving my entire collection felt necessary after discovering better products at reasonable prices like the Ultimate Outer 2.5.

These are the most popular choice according to distributor Sleeve City. Two additional products are also available: a Japanese style resealable sleeve and the heavyweight 5.0mil version of the Ultimate. Sleeve City self-produced a video showing off a fancy reissue of Blakey’s Indestructible inserted into each sleeve in case you’re unsure which one to go with, otherwise, the 2.5 is perfect for almost every record.