The shelf decides what you actually play.

Two bays, two habits. Boxes on their spines carry their own weight and stay reachable; a flat stack loads every box onto the one at the bottom, and at 1.4 kg a box the sixth is holding seven kilos of somebody else's game night. The other measurement on the sheet is a card in cross-section: two sleeve walls of six hundredths of a millimetre each, which is nothing until you multiply it by a hundred cards and try to close the lid.

The tray in a retail box is cut for bare cards. Sleeve the deck and it grows 12 mm — five more than the slot has to give — which is why so many lids sit proud once a collection gets loved.

The table this argument happens on. The decks are sleeved and standing in a wooden tray at the edge, because they stopped fitting the box they came in — which is the thing worth measuring before it happens to you.

The insert exactly as the publisher cut it: one narrow slot for the deck, the rest given to wood and coin. That slot is about 38 mm. Sleeved, the same hundred cards want 43.

The same slot in section. Sleeved, the deck stands five millimetres over the wall and the lid rides on it. A strip of foam-core down one side sends the deck home — no third-party tray, no lid sitting proud.

Start with the shelf — its depth and its load decide what you are able to keep. Sleeves come second, and only for the decks that earn them. Editions come last, because a deluxe box is still a box that has to fit.