To print a Yu-Gi-Oh! card you can play at a kitchen table, print it on ordinary paper at exactly 59 × 86 mm, cut it out, and slide it into a sleeve in front of a real card. That’s the whole method for proxies. A card that stands on its own needs heavier paper, and either way the likeliest failure is a print dialog that quietly shrinks the page.
What a proxy is and where it’s allowed
A proxy is a stand-in: a printout, or a relabelled card, that represents a card you don’t have in your hand. A card you invented yourself gets treated the same way wherever rules are enforced.
Konami’s tournament policy (version 2.5, in effect since September 5, 2025) doesn’t leave much room: “Proxies (cards used to represent a different card) are not allowed in Sanctioned or Official events. Photocopies, cards that have been relabeled, etc., are considered ‘proxies’ and cannot be used in your Deck in a Sanctioned or Official tournament. This includes Tier 1 events.” Tier 1 is the bottom tier, the local tournaments your game store runs. The next line closes the obvious loophole: “Even if you own an official copy of the card, you cannot include proxy cards in your Deck.” Counterfeit cards get the same ban one paragraph earlier.
That policy covers sanctioned events and nothing else. At home, or at a casual night, it’s up to the people you’re playing with, so ask before you shuffle.
The sleeve method, step by step
I think this is the right answer for most people reading this page, and it needs no special paper.
- Get the card as an image. For a card of your own, build it in the card maker and press Save. For proxies of real cards from a deck list, a deck-import tool such as YGO Print or Proxy Card Maker is quicker than ours, because it pulls the whole list and hands you a PDF.
- Put nine on a page. On our custom cards page, Print sheet gives you a one-page PDF for Letter or A4 with your nine newest saved cards at 59 × 86 mm, edge to edge, and cut marks around the block.
- Print it on plain paper at true size. The settings are in the next section.
- Lay a ruler across one card before you print more. It should be 59 mm from border to border.
- Cut the cards out.
- Slide each one into a Japanese-size sleeve in front of a real card you don’t need. The real card supplies the stiffness and the back.
Use the same opaque-backed sleeves for the whole deck, so a proxy can’t be picked out from behind. And skip the glue. It ruins the card underneath, and the sleeve already holds the paper flat.
Print settings for true size
The rule is that nothing scales. Adobe says Acrobat’s own default is to shrink pages to the printable area, so you have to change it every time unless you save a preset.
| Printing from | Choose | Stay away from |
|---|---|---|
| Acrobat Reader (Windows or Mac) | Page Sizing & Handling: Actual size | Fit, Shrink oversized pages |
| Chrome, a PDF | More settings, Scale: Custom, then type 100 | Fit to printable area, Fit to paper |
| Preview on a Mac | Scale: 100% | Scale to Fit |
Other browsers keep the same choice under Scale: type 100, and never pick a Fit option. Set the paper size in the dialog to the paper in the tray, leave pages per sheet at 1, and keep borderless printing off.
Our print sheet is a PDF (yugioh-cards-letter.pdf or yugioh-cards-a4.pdf), and a PDF carries its own page size, so Actual size or 100% in any of those dialogs prints the cards at 59 × 86 mm. Pick the file that matches your paper. A Letter sheet printed on A4, or the other way round, can shift the block or clip the cut marks.
Then let the ruler decide. One card should measure 59 mm across, and the block of nine should measure 177 mm across and 258 mm down between the outermost cut marks. Measure the block: over that distance a 3% error is more than 5 mm, which is hard to miss. If it’s off and your dialog has a scale box, the fix is arithmetic: multiply the scale you used by 177 and divide by what you measured.
Paper for a card with nothing behind it
American paper weights are a trap. Pounds only compare within one grade of paper, so “110 lb” on a pack means 199 gsm if it’s index stock and 298 gsm if it’s cover stock. Buy by gsm.
| Paper | gsm | US label | At home? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copy paper | 75 to 90 | 20 to 24 lb bond | Any printer. All the sleeve method needs. |
| Light card stock | 176 | 65 lb cover | Most inkjets |
| Index stock | 199 | 110 lb index | Right at the usual limit |
| Card stock | 216 | 80 lb cover | Past it on many printers. Read the manual first. |
| Heavy card stock | 270 to 298 | 100 to 110 lb cover | Copy shop |
| Photo paper, matte or glossy | up to about 300 | sold by gsm | Inkjet only |
“The usual limit” comes from the makers’ own spec pages. HP lists its ENVY 6000 series at 60 to 90 gsm for plain paper, up to 200 for cards and up to 300 for HP photo paper. Canon’s PIXMA pages say 64 to 105 gsm plain and about 300 for Canon’s own photo paper. Epson’s ET-2850 guide gives 64 to 90 gsm for plain paper. Lasers are stricter: one Brother support page stops at 163 gsm, from the multi-purpose tray only, and warns that inkjet paper can jam or damage the machine. Notice that every 300 figure belongs to the maker’s photo paper, not to whatever card stock the craft shop sells.
So my rule is to stop near 200 gsm at home and take anything heavier to a copy shop. If your printer’s manual names a higher card weight, trust the manual over me.
For a card that’s mostly artwork I’d pick an inkjet and matte photo paper, with the driver’s paper type set to match and quality on High. Glossy paper I’d skip: it shows fingerprints, and under a sleeve you’re adding one shine to another.
Cutting and corners
A guillotine or rotary trimmer beats scissors, and a craft knife against a steel ruler beats both if you’re patient. Cut the sheet into three long strips first, then cut each strip into cards. That way most cuts run the full length of a line you can see.
On our sheet the cards touch, and the marks sit exactly on the card edges, outside the block. So one cut separates two cards: four cuts down the page and four across, and every piece is 59 × 86 mm.
Corner punches are sold by radius, and 3 mm is the size proxy makers usually name. I haven’t found an official radius for a real card, so hold the punch’s sample against one before you buy. Sleeved, nobody sees the corners.
What goes wrong
The cards are 57 mm wide
A fit option squeezed the page into the printer’s printable area. With a 3 mm margin on each side, which is what Epson specifies for several of its inkjets, an A4 page has 204 of its 210 mm to print on. Fit scales everything to 97%, and a 59 mm card lands at 57.3. Fix the scale setting and reprint.
The colours are darker than the screen
Some of this is normal, since a screen is lit from behind and paper isn’t. Epson’s first fix is the dull one: make sure the paper type in the driver matches the paper in the tray. If the art still prints murky, brighten the picture before you upload it. Our maker has no brightness control.
Stripes across the artwork
Banding is usually the printer. Epson’s list: run a nozzle check and clean the print head if it shows gaps, check the paper type setting, turn off any high speed mode, and align the head.
The effect text is mush
Divide the image’s width in pixels by 2.32, the card’s width in inches. You want 300 or more, which takes 697 pixels. A 400 pixel image is 172 dpi, and the small effect text is the first thing to go. Don’t print screenshots or pictures saved out of a chat app. The maker’s PNG is 1626 pixels wide, and the sheet places each card at 300 dpi.
Copy shops and print-on-demand
| Route | Good for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Home printer, plain paper, sleeve | Testing a deck tonight | You need spare real cards as backing |
| Copy shop | Card stock your printer can’t feed | You still cut it yourself, and their machine has a fit setting too |
| Print-on-demand card printer | Foil, real card stock, die-cut corners | Size, bleed, waiting, and rules about whose art it is |
FedEx Office is a fair example of a copy shop: Letter, Legal and Tabloid sheets, card stock up to 100 lb, and prints with a small margin, not full bleed. That margin is fine for our sheet, which keeps every card at least 9 mm from the paper’s edge. Ask for 100% with no scaling, and measure the first sheet before paying for twenty.
Print-on-demand is where the size bites. MakePlayingCards sells single decks with no minimum, offers stocks with a blue or black core and a holographic option, and asks for 300 dpi art with an eighth of an inch of bleed. Its size list has no 59 × 86 mm. The nearest is Skat at 58.9 × 90.9 mm: right width, 5 mm too tall. Snapshot says outright that it prints only 63.5 × 88.9 mm and won’t print copyrighted card art. Our downloads end at the card’s border, so you’d add the bleed yourself. It’s still the only route to foil, which neither this site nor a home printer can do. I’d use it for your own designs as gifts or display pieces, not for cards meant to sit in a deck.
Backs and double-sided printing
With the sleeve method the real card is the back, so there’s nothing to print. A standalone card in an opaque sleeve doesn’t need a back either.
If you want one anyway, make a second sheet with your own design in the same nine positions (our sheet does fronts only). In Chrome the options are “Print on both sides” and “Flip on long edge”, or you can feed the paper through twice. Don’t count on the two sides meeting to the millimetre. Pick a back with no border, so a small shift doesn’t show.
Don’t copy the official back onto a bare card. Yugipedia draws the line between a fan-made card and a counterfeit at whether it’s made to pass as authentic, and the back is most of what makes a loose card pass. In a sleeve nobody sees it, so it buys you nothing at the table, and cards get traded, sold in bulk lots and handed to younger siblings. Print a back that’s plainly yours, or leave it white.