Looks like this campaign is on route to a nail biting finish. At this stage, it's still not impossible to succeed, but if it continues without any additional perk or offering, then it may indeed fall short of the funding target.

I think Jeki Yoo is a brilliant performer, with great routines, excellent personality, and I also think it's great that he has a signature phrase (even if it is as simple as "Oh my!"). That's why I'm kind of disappointed in his choice of design for his debut deck.

I have nothing at all against standard pips and courts -- personally, I prefer them (recolouring and minimal customization of courts is something I like also) and I totally understand how the familiarity of standard designs can be a positive when performing for lay audiences.

However, the back design really ought to be something special, in order to justify not just buying a 3-5 dollar deck instead.

This back design is probably the most uninspiring that I've seen in years. I thought the "Anyone" deck's back design was as lame as it gets, and this one looks even lazier.

At least with other decks using the casino style mirrored logo design, there is a some sort of stylish logo. With this, it's just plain white text. Looks like something that anybody can come up with in an application like Microsoft word (or something that's not even a specialist art application). It's tough to find reasons to want to part with cash for such a deck, other than wanting to help out Jeki.

When you have magicians like Shin Lim, Piff the Magic Dragon, Derren Brown, David Blaine, and so many others who have decks with genuinely nice designs, Jeki's offering is, comparitively, a huge letdown. I don't think the design (if you can even call it that), does justice to Jeki's fun and creative persona. Or even justice to the popularity of his catchphrase, for that matter.

Nonetheless, I wish Jeki a ton of luck for the final days of the campaign.

Even 9 years since their release, the Sharps are still remain my all time favourite deck of cards. I've probably got around 50 of them. Although I love the original classic stock that they're printed on, ultimately it's the marking system that makes it my favourite. Kind of gutted that a V2 has never been released.

I have the Brooklyn deck also... but honestly, I don't rate that deck too highly because it actually fails the riffle test. Although it does use something of a shade system it isn't done particularly well. I read somewhere that the guys that made the Brooklyn deck called it the greatest marking system of all time. In theory, maybe. But the execution... no chance brother.

Yo!

It's been a while. Years, in fact. Now that I've got career sorted and some savings, I can finally return to a bit of good ol' card collecting again

I've purchased a small number of decks recently to test out the newer card stocks and innovations, and I'm still in the process of putting each deck through about 10 hours of shuffling so that I can decide what does and doesn't work for me. Seems like thin crushed stocks have become a big thing in the last 5 years or so.

In the mean time, I purchased a bunch of Carat Creations' DS1 deck sleeves for some of my favourite decks in my stash. I really like them. A nice, inexpensive, and almost invisible way to add a bit of extra protection to your new and sealed decks. I highly recommend them 👍

Thank you Kevin, for the review of the deck, and thanks also to everybody on the thread that has given their thoughts on the deck.

The reviews are making me more and more curious... because whilst I can work with a deck featuring a mediocre two-way back design, handling really is the make or break factor for me.

The opinions on how this deck handles appears to be somewhat divided. Whilst nobody (so far) is saying that the handling trumps that of LPCC or EPCC, it's a split decision between whether the cards are better than average or not.

Whilst I don't have the deck yet, my suspicion is that they are printed at the Taiwan factory, and that they use the factory's "standard" coating (and not the coating that LPCC and EPCC use for their cards -- a guess would say that particular coating cannot be used without printing via LPCC or EPCC).

Hopefully my order will arrive in the upcoming week, and when it does, I'll share my thoughts on the stock, coating, embossing, and overall handling.

Awesome!

Thanks for the update brother. A fair few seem to have made use of the Taiwan factory without going through EPCC or LPCC... but in each case, they've not had the ultra-slick coating that LPCC and EPCC have utilised, and so the cards have a little more friction. I guess the difference would be a little too subtle for most to notice though.

If these really have come from the taiwan factory, then I will definitely order more, because I love the stuff from that plant, because the card stock is top notch, and the cards are traditionally cut!

It's always sad to hear of one's passing... my deepest condolences to the Dawson family.

I never got to speak to Tom (I'm relatively new to card collecting, in comparison to most members here), but still, even I know that Tom Dawson is legendary. Quite possibly the greatest playing card collector of all time.

Tom's legacy will live on, long after even we're all gone. Indeed, a life well lived, and a life that deserves to be celebrated.

I tip my hat off to the great innings of Tom Dawson.

Wishing the great man a healthy, speedy, and full recovery.

LUXX Palme was manufactured at the Taiwan factory.

The Emerald Finish is what comes out of the PRC factory, and those cards feel totally different to the Taiwan cards. Emerald Finish cards look and feel like the card stock used for the Pr1me decks. In a nutshell, the PRC cards aren't even similar to the Taiwan cards.

Diamond/Master finish, Classic Finish, Robusto Finish, and Elite/Damask Finish are all very distinctive in both the look of the paper, and more importantly, the feel of the paper -- even blindfolded, it's very easily to identify which stock and finish is used, by the card thickness, flexibility/stiffness, and embossing pattern.

Although Classic Finish and Elite Finish are most similar, the feel of the embossing is very different, hence the different handling also.

It's tough to confuse any of them.

Don, the telltales on the Sharps back design cannot be spotted at all in a riffle... not unless you're de-focussing your eyes throughout the riffle, and can see the entire back of card as it is being shuffled.

My half a brick of Readers still hasn't arrived... but I completely agree with PT about the marking system being juvenile -- extremely juvenile, actually.

I saw an instagram photo of the Readers back design, and within a second I could see that it was the Jack of Spades. When a marking system is THAT easy to spot, it's kind of disappointing.

It's exactly the same style of markings that the horribly named "ultimate marked deck" uses... but it's even easier to spot than the UMD. I'm not really a fan of that system, but I think Ellusionist's 2nd edition 1800 decks are probably the best to use that particular style of markings.

Anyway, rather than the marking system, I've purchased these decks for the Damask Finish -- I want to see whether or not EPCC have managed to hit another home run with paper quality to not.

Hank, the first and second edition LUXX decks use the Diamond Finish, where as the LUXX Palme decks use Elite Finish.

Whilst Diamond finish is completely different, the Elite Finish uses the Classic Finish paper, but with a different embossing pattern. It does handle differently, and in my experience, Elite Finish decks lasts longer the Classic Finish.

Although it sounds like a very very slight difference to Classic Finish, the embossing pattern is easy to notice even visually!

That's a good question brother... and the answers you get will vary from person to person, because "good" and "bad" (in terms of how cards feel and handle) is completely subjective. As they say, "one man's food is another man's poison".

I do gambling sleights, rather than cardistry or magic... and so for me, gambling routines like what Richard Turner, Jason England, and Darwin Ortiz do, those are the types I take inspiration from. So I do lots of false dealing, false shuffles, and riffle stacking.

Therefore, I need cards to be traditionally cut -- it makes faro and interlace shuffles so much easier for me.‎

Given my style of handling cards, I need cards to be pretty stiff, very durable, and also, to be pretty slick... and ‎that is why LPCC's diamond finish (which is the same as EPCC's master finish) is my favourite. What I like about the diamond/master finish coating, is that when I need to extract a card using just a fingertip, the coating has enough grip/tack to it to allow a card to be extracted effortlessly... and yet the cards slide through each other for false shuffles just as beautifully. It's perfect for me.

With USPCC magic finish cards, yeah, they are slick... but due to ridiculously low tack/grip, the first few shuffles with a magic finish deck for me usually result in at least one round of "52 card pickup".‎

I know that many still like USPCC cards, but they are genuinely terrible for me... because USPCC cards just do not last long. With the shuffle work I do, a USPCC deck becomes good for the trash can in pretty much one or two days. My LPCC and EPCC decks ‎usually last a month. 
‎
USPCC cards ‎like the latest Black Lions decks feel more fragile than ever before... and so I don't have confidence in them, knowing that just a few rough shuffles later, the cards will end up having difficult to remove bends in them. 
‎
(Having said that though, the White Lions‎ decks by USPCC were very good -- relatively durable, and had nice thickness)

Many magicians swear by Bicycle decks... and the things that make standard Bikes terrible for me, are probably the things that make Bikes perfect for them. 

As for design... I like borderless back designs, purely for the fact that they make false deals more difficult to spot.‎

So to sum it up, ‎a deck with a borderless back design from LPCC/EPCC with diamond/master finish, tends to be perfect for me to do gambling routines.

For MAGIC routines (such as mentalism tricks), there is only one deck I ever use.. and it's one of the few decks I like which doesn't have the diamond/master finish, is the Sharps by LPCC... and that's purely because the marking system (it uses factory shade/juice) is by far the best I have ever come across. 

It's the only marking system that passes the riffle test, and the markings are completely invisible to anybody that hasn't trained their eyes to read the patterns. In fact, it's the ONLY marked deck that I'm willing to hand out for inspection, because no matter how hard anybody tries, they won't see the markings!‎

I think that for magic, having a marked deck which I can read very clearly (and that too from across a table!) ‎is priceless. And the fact that the Sharps have a thick and durable stock, nice coating, and are traditionally cut, is like icing on the cake for me!

All suits in a deck of cards being the same colour instantly means that I cannot use the decks

The customisation, appears to simply be:

- Recolouring the standard Riderback and standard faces.
- Addition of two additional corner pips
- Addition of numbers underneath the usual corner pips
- Modification to the Ace of Spades

I'm in complete agreement with Don here, in that the success of this project puts a lot of emphasis on buyers to create their own games (and that too, games which make use of the additional numbers, and require the cards to have only one colour)... and that is a lot to ask for.

Just the Bicycle branding and classic Riderback design alone isn't enough to guarantee success (and even less so, when you take away the traditional idea of pips/indicies having two colours). As it is, there are already many Riderback colour variations out there -- some even have metallic ink.

Seeing as the funding goal is going to be a big one, my honest opinion at present is that it's going to be an uphill battle. I genuinely hope you prove me wrong though.

Although my latest order of Robusto Classics have not yet arrived, my deck that arrived in late December is still going strong despite the daily abuse I put them through.

They outlast the Classic Finish decks by a fair bit, which in turn outlast any of the present day USPCC decks multifold. So, definitely a long lasting deck!

Here's a question for PCF member's who already have a Reserve deck that they've opened: what's the foil registration like on this one?

Some of the previous EPCC decks that have used foil on card backs (eg. Exquisite Bold, and 52+J deck) have had issues whereby the registration is way off -- as in really noticeable.

In the photos that Anthony posted, the foil registration actually looked close to perfect... but then again, those could have just been carefully selected cards.