Which expensive brands are less clear/readable? I'm always interested in what people like about cards.
In my honest opinion - all of them. The reason these caught my eye is because I think they look better than pretty much anything else I've seen/owned.
That's not to say other brands look bad - I like and play with a lot of them in my home games.
Rather than dog other brands, I'll talk about what I love about these:
1. The red is bright and it's impossible to mistake the color of the card at a glance from a distance. I
hate dark security red ink.
2. The suits are the perfect shape. Some other brands look like they took the image file of the suits and then stretched the art out to fit the card. For example, even though overall I'm very positive on the pips, Da Vinci cards look this way to me. The suits of these Triton cards also are round where they need to be and pointy where they need to be. Also, a big pet peeve of mine is when there's not a lot of separation between the "petals" of the clubs. A lot of the aforementioned "cheap Chinese junk" cards and many others share a design where the club petals aren't as distinct. (examples: the generic striped box cards, Bullets, Classic Ten, Broken Arrow Pro, Gem) These are perfect to me.
3. The font is also pretty much perfect. No stretching on this, either. An egregious example of stretched font would be Marion Pro. And while I like the overall design of Copags, the font always looked a little sterile and boxy to me. Particularly the "10" cards.
4. It's hard to tell from the screenshot I provided because the white balance in that portion of the video was off (it's too blue), but the card stock looks like a very nice, bright white. A lot of brands out there look a little too blue (some Chips & Games, PokerStars Copags), a little too yellow (Copag Elites) or sometimes just dull so the ink doesn't stand out (Bullets, Broken Arrow Pro). My favorite white stocks tend to be Gutshot, Faded Spade FSX, Gem, and Da Vinci.
5. The suits in the center of the number cards are big and thick, and don't leave a ton of space empty on the card. Copag Elites and Bicycle Prestige (Fournier) have smaller suits.
All of these are very small nitpicks very subjective preferences. But I've just never seen cards that check all the boxes for me like these seem to, at least visually.
design:
