So why does the UV500 Black Arcane deck fan better than the performance coating deck when the finish is only Air-Cushion?
Placebo?
My UV500 deck is way more broken in than the perf coating?
I'm lying to mess with your minds to make a debatable topic for kicks?!
Well my answer to those questions and possible answers is no.
Here is my explanation why based on absolutely nothing. 
You know when you mix baking soda and vinegar it bubbles for reasons not worthy of a google search?
Well maybe if you apply standard air cushion finish to a deck with Ellusionist's UV500 stock, the deck just fans better that way just because!
Actually, there are two very simple factors that would determine why your old deck is better than your new one.
1) There are a lot of factors that can alter a deck's performance even before it's been placed in the box, never mind after it comes out.
2) Your stating your personal preference as a reviewer. Someone else could try your two decks and say the other is the preferred deck, or simply agree with you. A hundred cardists testing both decks and rating them on various performance factors would end up producing pretty close to one hundred different detailed ratings. One man's favorite dessert may be another man's poison...
In the end, while you are applying what you believe to be some degree of impartiality, a review of anything by any reviewer has the reviewer's preferences factored into it to a greater or lesser degree. Show me a completely impartial reviewer, and I'll show you a computer with some really great sensors and robotics! Reviews don't apply the scientific method - and frankly, aren't meant to.
Consider it like movie reviewers. Not every reviewer agrees about every movie - in some cases you could have two reviewers give completely opposed views of the same movie. So what are you to do? The secret isn't in listening to all the reviewers, or taking a poll of the general public, but in listening to the reviewer whose tastes most closely match your own. Listen to that reviewer and you stand the highest chance of watching a movie you'll like because that reviewer recommended it.
That same thing applies to reviews of ANYTHING, including decks of cards.
Don, based on E's posts, what I gathered is that USPCC changed paper suppliers during the move. As far as I know, the UV stock DB used was not the same as the old Cincinnati paper.
Which E article was it? To the best of my knowledge, they stopped using UV500 because it became too expensive to make reasonably affordable decks. The odds that they changed suppliers when they only moved from one side of the Ohio River to the other are low - Erlanger is more of a suburb of Cincinnati, and is closer to the largest of the three local airports. The old plant and the new one are maybe a half-hour away from each other.
Is it possible that Blaine's deck run didn't use UV500? Sure. I postulated recently that the "500" in UV500 was probably a reference to the paper's weight in grams per square meter (gsm). Everyone remembers just how thick E decks were until recently, right? A 500-gsm stock would certainly account for it - Bicycle Rider Back decks vary, but the last time I checked, it was changed to a lighter 300-gsm stock last year because of problems with the finish. But we know it's a UV-reflective stock, just as the UV500 was, so it could be UV500, or it could be, oh, perhaps UV400, or UV350...
To me it was that E could still have the paper if they wanted it, but the number of decks they had to commit to was so high that they couldnt do it.
It is possible then that DB commited to enough decks. I guess it is possible for his personal decks and all variants of WL. I am sure he could afford alot of decks.
But most likely it is different than the Ellusionist UV stock.
"Having to commit to a large number of decks" is another way of saying "too expensive." It sounds like in order for E to make their UV500 decks at least close to the same price, they would have needed to order way more than they were willing or perhaps even able to commit to. USPC gives volume discounts - the more decks you make, the cheaper per-deck it gets, but you still have to pay for all of those decks. If the cost increases because of increased paper costs, the only way to bring the price down to where it used to be (or failing that, low enough to be sellable at a minimally-acceptable profit margin) would be to print more decks, enough to get the per-deck costs low enough to make it economical again - but there's still that niggling issue about needing to PAY for all that many decks, which comes before you can actually sell any of them, other than pre-orders, but even pre-orders might not have been enough to cover the gap. And not just pay for them, but pay for storing them, pay for having them moved around, etc.
For the White Lions, USPC made several major exceptions for David Blaine. He was permitted to personally supervise the actual printing and finishing processes, and they allowed him to switch colors in the middle of a press run from blue to red for the deck backs, resulting in the limited edition purple "rainbow" decks that actually come in varying shades of purple because of this process. The UV decks were simply a matter of tossing in some sheets of UV stock at some point in the blue portion of the press run and keeping track of the decks that utilized that paper - easy enough with a UV flashlight!
As with pretty much every deck he's made, the design was initially for his own personal use. When they were created, NONE were intended for public sale - though in the back of everyone's minds at DB Productions, I'm sure they all knew that a point would come where David would make a decent amount of decks available to his adoring fans and playing card collectors.
And, oh yeah, David can afford to make a LOT of decks, VAST QUANTITIES of decks... He probably burns through a few packs a day on average just with performing here and there and giving some to people as gifts. The guy can be really impromptu when he wants to be, aside from his major stunts testing the limits of human endurance, which are meticulously planned to the final detail.
It would surprise me not in the least to learn that yes, this is not exactly the same stock as the UV500 that was used over at E. But it would also not surprise me in the least to learn that the stock David used came from the same mill and used the same processes to be created, but perhaps was simply of a different weight or something. Remember, there were nowhere near as many UV decks made as ordinary blue ones... He was willing and could afford to make a portion of his run out of the stuff, but possibly not the entire run. And it would not surprise me to learn that creating this UV stock is some sort of trade secret, exclusive to the same mill that created the UV500 paper, in which case, ANY UV-reflective stock would come from the same source.
But of course, I have no proof of this one way or another. Perhaps Robert can ask Bill that when he speaks to him about the other "conspiracy"...
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