Card Player, thanks for the review.
I own a standard black Porper clip that I got sometime in 2012. At the time I was told that it was the best quality clip available, and so when I found one on eBay for less than the usual price that they listed for on online shops, I didn't hesitate to make the purchase. Once I received the Porper clip and tried to use it, I absolutely hated it.
More than anything, getting a deck in and out of the clip was a nightmare -- I ruined two tuckboxes. My porper clip has been collecting dust ever since.
So brother, is the brass Porper clip any easier to use?
Something that many people overlook about Porper clips is that they do an excellent job at protecting your CARDS - while at the same time destroying your tuck boxes. It's the application of pressure from the sides - it keeps cards flat and ready to use, like a card press in your pocket, but the boxes were never meant to be pressed in this fashion. Embossing and debossing get flattened and the walls of the tuck box get crushed when you transfer the box in and out of the clip.
The real problem is that ANY such solution that flattens cards will destroy boxes unless the cards are being flattened without a box. Cards are great when flat; boxes, not so much. Porpers or other clips can't flatten just the cards as they will come loose - and directly-applied pressure to the top and bottom cards of a deck without a cushioning layer of tuck box paper between will ruin that card and possibly one or two more below it. Legit old-school deck presses were capable of holding as many as a dozen decks with dividers between them - but they were all without boxes (deck presses actually were first in use before decks were sold in tuck boxes - they were simply wrapped in paper). Presses started falling out of favor when cards started dropping in price to the point that nearly anyone could afford at least a cheap, bottom-of-the-line deck.
I can tell you that a Porper clip can be pried open just a wee bit, allowing a super-tight clamp to change into a merely-tight clamp. I managed that on my old Porper by simply pulling the sides apart manually. You won't get a lot of play from them, but the old ones were aluminum, and it is to some degree bendable, despite how they're carved from a solid block of the metal. This brass one should be even easier to bend, factoring in that it doesn't have the "warped spine" that gives the original Porper its spring-like tension.
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