Quote from Don
"Anyone making a custom deck can get the AoS code treatment if they want. Few people want it, however. I see it on decks made by USPC for USPC and on the brass "Bicycle Steam Punk" deck - but not the other two colors, or at the least not the copper edition. It was also on Robocycle, which T11 made, but it was commission work for USPC, not their own baby. Seriously, why would one want the codes? They're cryptic."
And obsolete. Is a deck collector going to break the seal and check the number? I find it funny ppl are always trying to determine the age of old cards by the tax stamp. Today's tax stamp is a sticker. You would think you would want to put the date on the sticker, but stickers can be swapped. The year needs to be on the box and while we are at it put the manufacture and finish. Seems pretty simple. I like the way Jackson put "Smooth" on the front. That's different. Are all modern Tally-Ho decks smooth nowadays?
Many USPC-made decks DO have the year on the box. It's in the copyright info printed on the bottom.
This works well for short-run decks, but not so much for mass-produced models. The problem there is that USPC doesn't want to waste tucks if it doesn't have to. It's why there's still a fair number of decks with a tuck box marked "Cincinnati, OH" and a Guarantee Joker marked "Erlanger, KY". It won't matter what year the box was printed if the contents are from a different year. But at least modern decks have a longer version of the AoS code that can narrow down the time of year the deck was made as well as the year itself, and without needing to resort to a letter code chart. These days the code has a prefix of four digits. First two are the week of the year and last two identify the year that the deck was printed.
Simply put, for some decks, they'll never have an easily-identified date. How many years has it been since there's been an AoS code on a pack of Congress cards? USPC pre-prints the fronts en masse, leaving these sheets on a shelf before deciding what back design to put on it. They dropped the AoS code because the year letter and "lot number" (or whatever the extra numbers are) aren't determined until the back is printed as well, at which time the front is already "fixed in time" and code-less.
Modern Tally-Ho decks aren't smooth and I doubt they ever have been, at least not while I've been playing with cards. Theirs is advertised as the "Linoid Finish", which is just a fancy way of saying "embossed" these days.
