Ticket to Ride, designed by Alan R. Moon and published by Days of Wonder since 2004, is one of the most commonly recommended gateway board games, and it's easy to see why once you've played a round.
Underneath the simple rules, the box actually contains two functionally different card types: train car cards used to claim routes, and destination ticket cards that set each player's long-term goals.
A lot of buyer research online assumes these two decks use two different physical card sizes, but the better-documented reality is more interesting and more useful to know before buying sleeves.
Here's what the cards in the original box actually measure, where the real size mismatch shows up, and how to store both decks properly.
In the original Ticket to Ride base game, both the train car cards and the destination ticket cards measure roughly 44mm by 68mm, a compact mini-European size well under a standard playing card's footprint. This is confirmed independently by sleeveyourgames.com's sleeve-fit database, which lists all 142 of the game's cards under a single 44 by 68mm sleeve category, and by board game reviewer Misut Meeple's detailed component breakdown of the original box.
That 142-card total breaks down into 110 train car cards (12 of each of eight colors plus 14 wild locomotives) and 30 destination ticket cards, alongside a couple of reference cards depending on the printing. Both card types sit at the same small dimension, not two separate sizes within the base box.
The genuinely useful sizing fact for buyers is a different one: Days of Wonder's own Ticket to Ride: 1910 expansion introduced a set of larger, 181-card replacement destination tickets sized 56mm by 87mm, the same large-format European dimension used by Ticket to Ride: Europe, specifically because the original mini-size tickets were awkward to shuffle and handle compared to a bigger card. Sleeve-fit databases including sleeveyourgames.com confirm this 56 by 87mm sizing for the 1910 expansion's cards directly.
That means a collector who owns both the base game and the 1910 expansion actually ends up with two different-sized destination ticket decks on the shelf: the original compact 44 by 68mm ones, and the larger 56 by 87mm replacements from 1910. That's the real two-size situation worth planning storage around, not a split between train cards and tickets within the base box itself.
Because the original box's cards sit at roughly 44 by 68mm, EVORETRO's current standard-size sleeve lineup, built around the 63.5 by 89mm standard poker footprint, is too large for these cards out of the box. A buyer reaching for ordinary TCG sleeves for the original printing will find every card swims loosely inside, defeating the point of sleeving in the first place.
Mini-European sleeves from a dedicated board game sleeve brand are the correct fit for the original 142-card set, and the larger 1910 tickets need their own separate large-format European sleeve (56 by 87mm) rather than a standard poker-size sleeve, since even the 1910 reprint falls short of full standard poker dimensions.
Even without full sleeving, Ticket to Ride benefits enormously from simply keeping the train car deck and the destination ticket deck physically separated before and after each session, since setup requires shuffling and dealing from both independently. Letting the two decks mix in the box's original insert slows down setup and makes it easy to misdeal at the start of a game.
The EVORETRO Resealable Team Bags are a simple way to keep the train car deck and ticket deck in their own clearly labeled bags, which is a genuinely bigger quality-of-life improvement for this specific game than for most other card-driven board games.
Once a collector adds expansions like 1910, Europe, or any of the city-specific maps, the number of decks on the shelf multiplies quickly, and each one deserves its own labeled, protected home rather than a shared pile of loose cards. A dedicated deck box per expansion keeps each map's train and ticket decks from migrating into the wrong box over time.
The EVORETRO Plastic Deck Box is a practical, inexpensive way to give each expansion's card set its own home, especially useful for a collector who owns more than one Ticket to Ride map and wants to grab just one box for game night instead of sorting through a shared pile.
Yes, in the original box both measure roughly 44mm by 68mm.
No, the original cards are smaller mini-European size, not standard poker size.
It introduced larger 56mm by 87mm destination tickets, creating a second, larger (but still non-standard) ticket size to store separately.
142 cards total: 110 train car cards and 30 destination ticket cards, plus reference cards.
Keep your train and ticket decks separated and setup-ready with the EVORETRO Resealable Team Bags.
See our Board Game Card Sleeve Buying Guide for general non-standard sizing theory, and Starting Card-Based Board Games: A Buying Guide for Newcomers for how Ticket to Ride compares to other gateway picks.
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