Ah I see, makes sense 
Sorry for the confusion the boxes say UV500, I presumed.
Common mistake. The paper company making the UV500 stock did raise the rates out of a reasonable range. The biggest feature of the stock, besides thickness and firmness, was the fact that it fluoresces under an ultra-violet or "black" light. For the bump in cost, E didn't feel it was worth keeping the glow feature anymore.
For a while, all the Bicycle decks they were making after that had "air-cushion finish" marked on the boxes. Some were air-cushion, some were an upgraded material. USPC Legal was requiring that any Bicycle deck with any finish had to say "air-cushion finish" on it. That's been relaxed since the advent of Magic Finish. The first-ever Magic Finish deck was the Gold Arcanes - it was experimental at the time, called "Performance Coating" by USPC, and E kept that name instead of calling it Magic Finish because they felt it sounded classier. I agree.
All new decks E produces are done with Performance Coating/Magic Finish, and the newest ones say "Performance Coating" on the box. As of mid-2011, the only decks not being made with PerfCoat were the blue Series 1800s. I have no idea if that remains true now.
They also took the opportunity to discontinue a couple of decks, specifically the "monochrome" versions of Black Tiger and Tally Ho Viper. Whatever's still in stock is the last they'll have, period. My guess as to why they're not making more is the single-color versions didn't sell as well as their two-color counterparts. But that's pure conjecture - there could be many reasons. Everything else continues to be made - aside from their handful of limited-edition decks, of course.
(Read 3103 times)
