I think I can shed some light on these decks. All of the information provided below is from memory, so I may have some numbers or details wrong. With that said, look at the attached two photos.
A bit of history:
In the late 1990's and early 2000's, casinos were asking USPC to produce a high quality Bee deck which had a generic logo in lieu of a Casino specific logo. Many different types of decks were made with generic logos on Bee decks. One common version is the decks with bumble bees on the back design. These decks were sold ONLY to Casinos. This practice ended in the mid 2000's, with the remaining sold in the USPC warehouse. In case anyone did not know - the USPC had a warehouse open for many years in Cincinnati which sold decks in bulk to local suppliers.
The Black "Tech Art" decks were produced in 2001 by USPC as test decks for casinos, with the USPC Cube Logo on the back. These decks had jumbo index tech art faces with a regular Bee box. Only 3000 of these decks were produced. Of this, many were destroyed during testing, with the remaining decks sold at the USPC Warehouse. A few locals used to buy and resell decks from the warehouse on eBay throughout the 2000's. A guy named Dave Hofmeister (ebay name pokerstud52) was lucky enough to get his hands on all of the remaining decks of these "Tech Art" Bee decks from the warehouse. He got a good deal on the decks, so he sold these locally in Cincinatti to poker tournaments and local buyers. Hundreds more were destroyed. Many years later he began selling them to a small group of magicians who fell in love with the back design. Personally, I had been waiting for years for the USPC to come out with the Bee back design with white borders. Aside from me, names I can remember of people who bought these decks were Bobby Hasbun, Lonnie Dilan, and possibly Lee Asher. I initially had around 100 decks.
The name "Tech Art Bee" was given by these early deck buyers because of the name "Jumbo Index Tech Art" on the back of the decks. Tech Art is a term that USPC uses for a particular type of face design, so the name "Tech Art Bee" is a bit of a misnomer.
Anyhow, a couple years I told Dave that I knew alot of people would be interested in buying these decks on eBay. At this point he had around 600 decks left. He sold all of his remaining decks on eBay, fairly inexpensively.
In 2005, the USPC produced ANOTHER test deck, with a VERY similar back design. It was a BLUE version of the back design but with Standard Index Bicycle faces, and actually still in a Bee box. I do not know how many of these decks were produced, definitely at least a few thousand. A Cincinnati local named Bill Merz (ebay name merz67) was the guy who was lucky enough to purchase all the decks from the warehouse. He sold all of his decks on eBay over a couple years. At one point I think I had around 4 dozen.
I only have a handful of each deck left. I sold off most of mine over the past 6-8 years. Below are photos distinguishing each deck.
I don't think any of this info has ever been written down, so thanks for the opportunity to put my memory to the test! Let me know if anyone has any comments or questions.
EDIT: fixed Dave's last name.
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