Plastic products are either soft plastic or rigid plastic. Rigid plastic is a plastic that can hold its shape such as a plastic water bottle. Even though you can crumble a water bottle in your hand pretty easily, it is still considered rigid plastic. Soft plastic is plastic that does not hold its shape such as a plastic bag, garbage bag or zip lock bag. Toploaders are a rigid plastic that can bend and flex under normal use and keep the item that is stored inside from being creased. The item inside a toploader will bend and flex along with the toploader under normal use. If you forcefully bend a toploader it will damage the item stored it in. Think of a toploader as being similar plastic as a credit card. Your credit card takes a lot of abuse but if you wanted to, you can bend it and ruin it.

All Toploaders are made of PVC (poly vinyl chloride). PVC contains acid, plain and simple. No matter what brand of toploader you are buying and no matter what a seller tells you or advertises, ALL TOPLOADERS CONTAIN ACID. There is one company that still states their toploaders are acid free, this is a blatant lie. There are also many sellers that advertise their toploaders are acid free, this is also FALSE. If you leave a toploader outdoors in the sun it will turn a nasty brown/yellow color in a matter of days. Although the item you store in it may not be harmed, the toploader does contain acid. Aside from the PVC material that the toploaders are made of, the glue that is used to manufacture the toploaders may also contain acid. The Ultra Pro company knowing that toploaders contain acid have been making some of their popular sized toploaders larger than standard size to accommodate a soft sleeve. Of course the soft sleeve you use should be acid free such as polypropylene or Mylar. For best protection you should always place your item in an acid free soft sleeve and then into a toploader.

The dimension in a toploader title states what size item they are made to hold. That dimension is not the actual toploader size. For example a 4x6 toploader is designed to hold 4x6 items. A 8x10 toploader is made to hold 8x10 items such as an 8x10 photograph. The actual dimensions of the topload are always larger than the naming size of the toploader. This seems to be the biggest misunderstanding when buyers have an issue with toploaders they have purchased.

To confuse you even more, Ultra Pro makes their 8x10 toploaders in two different physical sizes. The 82825 is a 8x10 standard size toploader, whereas the 81146 is their 8x10 larger size toploader to accommodate a soft sleeve. The Ultra Pro 4x6 and 5x7 are only made in the larger size to accommodate a soft sleeve.

You should always look for the actual physical dimensions when purchasing the proper size toploader for your needs. There may be different size toploaders for a type of item you want to store. If you see a toploader advertised for postcards, you need to know the actual size. Make sure you know what you are buying. For example postcards generally come in two different sizes, vintage and continental sized. Some collectors like their vintage toploader to be larger, commonly the 4x6 is used for this. However some collectors like to use the 5⅞ x 3¾ side load toploaders to store their vintage postcards.

A toploader has the opening on the short dimension where as a sideloader is on the long dimension. For example a 4”x6” toploader is open on the 4” part. A 4x6 sideload is open on the 6” part. Often time’s sideloaders are advertised with the larger dimension first such as “6x4 Sideloaders”.