Well it appears that ICv2 really has the eyes and ears of the industry.  Within 12 hours of my comments about UltraPro working with Wizards of the Coast in Magic sleeves and accessories I was contacted directly by management at both Max Protection and UltraPro, and both of them had basically the same thing to say:  they are listening to the players (our customers), know what they want, and are striving to deliver it.  In both cases I was impressed that the people took the time to talk with a small store owner about their wares.

The UltraPro people addressed the four points I made.

According to UltraPro, they have talked to the folks at WotC about the legality of their new sleeves but hadn't talked with people at the DCI yet.  I was assured that according to the people at WotC, all the M:TG sleeves would be tournament legal (I suggested that they send PDF's to the top pro judges and ask for their input on the legality of them.  We'll see what comes out).

Since they read ICv2, Pokemon addressed the border color issue this week requiring all tournament legal sleeves to have a solid single-colored border (most of the art sleeves currently offered by UltraPro fail the solid border test).

The new M:TG sleeves are supposed to come out with enough sleeves for the average player to sleeve their entire deck with one package.  That would mean 75 sleeves per package, enough for a deck and a sideboard.  That's a positive change and most players will appreciate this.

The art they plan on using is the classic Magic: The Gathering art, so we should see less nudity and more cool sleeves.  I really hope they come through on this: simple designs like the back of the Magic card with different solid border colors would probably sell well based on our small market research.  The solid blacks are already visible on the UltraPro home page.  I can't wait to sleeve a deck with sleeves that reflect what I'm playing, be it goblins, dragons, elves or zombies. 

Finally, they explained the special 10 foil sleeve deal with a recent release as their 10th year anniversary promotion.  I was at GenCon and nothing was promoted as 10th anniversary at all.  I also did a small amount of research and found nothing on their Website about the 10th anniversary...

Since we probably missed the promotion and the birthday, we wish UltraPro a happy 10th and hope you'll be around for many more!