New Stock Bicycle Deck Review

I wear down my stock of cards very quickly and I estimate that I use over 200 decks of cards a year. Between practicing and performing and occasionally playing around with friends, it's sometimes a wonder that I have any on hand at all.

Hence, it makes sense for me to purchase the decks in bulk - I tend to purchase 3 dozen at a time or so whenever I make a trip down to my supplier. The supplier (who shall remain unnamed) has been kind to me and supplies his cards to me at distributor rates - that's about $45 a dozen after counting the Goods and Services Tax (GST... grrr).

My friend Zian recently managed to get his hands on a stock of cards at a good deal and was offerring it at $4 a deck and $42 for a dozen on the Singapore Magic Circle forums. You can check it out here if you're interested in buying some bicycle cards:
http://forums.singaporemagiccircle.com/index.php?showtopic=7968&hl

As of late the stock of cards that I have been getting from my regular supplier has (for some reason or other) dropped in quality. Although I'd be the first to accept any minor fluctuations in quality when it comes to playing cards, I have to say that the latest deviation from quality is starting to irritate me. Misprinted (off centre, faded... etc) I can deal with; but poorly cut corners and sides I really cannot stomach. It throws off much of the more detailed work you can do with a deck of cards.

Anyway, Zian very graciously passed me a blue deck as a sample to test. I put it through the usual tests I perform whenever I'm toying with a deck's quality. The new cards slid out of the cardcase like a dream. Some cards come out as a block - a sure sign that the cards have been kept for too long. I was worried that the reason he manged to get them at such a low price is because the stock's been around for too long. I was thankful that my misgivings were unfounded.

I have no complains about colour - this is standard from USPC; anyway, the colours change from one batch to another batch. It has something to do with the manufacturing process - they can never seem to get the EXACT same blue. This seems more pronounced with the red cards though. But the print is slightly off centre, which also seems to be another consistent thing about USPC - all their cards are usually printed slightly off centre. LOL. Check it out: both the faces AND the backs!

Well, there are many devious and nefarious uses for such cards; I won't go into detail here, but the wise cardman knows how to exploit such inconsistencies to his advantage.

The texture is consistent with the standard air-cushion finish, but the stock is slightly thinner than the ones supplied to me by my regular supplier. It's quite negligible, but since I always preferred thinner stock anyway, I took to it well from the onset.

The edges are cut well - smoother than the ones I got from my supplier anyway. Check it out:

My regular supplier's deck is on the left. You can see that some of the edges are actually protruding - rest assured that I had the deck squared up tight. Somehow during the cutting process, some cards were cut a little less?More? Who knows? It screws up all major riffle shuffling work! Zian's sample deck (top right) looks so smooth I could use it to wipe a baby's ass!

The fact that the deck has no protruding edges makes my life a lot easier - runups and precise shuffle work on the table is less difficult.

Anyway, the final test for me is always the faro test. The deck faros perfectly in the hands. In fact, some cards have their edges cut so badly it takes a few runs, shuffles and quite a bit of handling before the deck actually faros. Elmsley has a very innovative way of solving this (check out his Collected Works, Vol 2. If you can get a hold of it. Still.)

Finally, I put the deck to the challenge of a tabled faro. Since this precise work requires that BOTH the edges AND the corners are cut well, it's a good test of the card's cutting. It usually takes a new deck some breaking into before it would faro well on the table, but this deck didn't need much coaxing. Almost fresh out of the deck, watch it go!
Tabled Faro Shuffle:


To sum things up, this deck's a sure fire go for me. I'm getting my next 3 dozen from Zian. At least until he runs out of stock. :)