Beware:
View attachment 559152
Thanks for the heads-up. I do suspect there's a difference though, because the ones in the black box are marketed as DURA-FLEX and the others aren't. There's only one way to be sure which is to buy them and send them to
@Dix for analysis, which I won't, because I stacked up on Desjgns when
@BonScot was kind enough to run an EU GB (the only remaining context where EU and GB can be mentioned in the same sentence).
Just to clear up the confusion......
Bike Prestige are a rare breed in that the poker size & bridge size versions are on 2 different card stocks. That's where any difference lies. In pretty much every other case, any particular brand's line of poker/bridge size are cut from the same stock.
Poker size
Prestige, regardless of the type or color of the packaging, are the same stuff.... which are also the same as
Fournier (& Sun-Fly's
Lucky Dragon). I threw the BS flag on "Duraflex" when I created the database.... Duraflex is nothing more than PVC that happens to speak Spanish.
In other words, if we don't call it PVC, maybe we can get away with people not realizing that's what they're getting.
On the Great Warped
Kem Debate.....
I bought a few sets of
Kems when my supply of old-stock
Desjgn started running low. At the time, they were the closest thing to the
Desjgns I could find available.
Now, if like
@Thomacetti I'd ever received a deck that came pre-warped, that would probably have rattled my cage some. Also, I never took any "special storage precautions" either. But then, my usual storage area is an open shelf in a climate controlled office, and there's a thick cut card on top of each deck in the cases which tends to keep 'em more tightly packed. So I guess you could say I kind of lucked out in hitting both items on the storage checklist. Hence, I've never had a deck of 'em warp on me.
That said, they are amongst the most expensive cards you can buy. & having such an expensive deck of cards warp on you is certainly going to put a lot of people off.
Going forward, I'm not likely to buy many more sets of 'em. Not because of the price potential warping issue, IMO they're still great cards for all of their other qualities, but only because I finally found something I like a little better from
Cartamundi. Which, by the time I get them shipped from Europe, are even more expensive than
Kems.
If we could only convince
Cartamundi to put out a certain other stock for general public sale that would be the nuts as far as I'm concerned..... Ahhh, it's nice to have a dream.
And finally, the often heated "
Modiano Screwing the QC Pooch" thing....
I'm going to start off by saying I'm COMPLETELY biased on this one. In more ways than one.
The first & most obvious being that I go all the way back to
@desjgn being among my favorite decks of cards to this era...
Second being that, going back nearly 40 years, I worked in the printing department, running the printing presses, at a plastics manufacturer. I know what that QC chain should be like. For what happened to actually happen, more than just one or two people had to have dropped the ball. OK, so fine, crap happens... no argument there.... But then when you're presented the blatantly obvious physical evidence the LAST thing you want to try & do is continue to deny it happened.
The whole situation just plain sucked. It's like when your wife & your sister have a falling out & you're forced to side with one of 'em because you know who's fault it was.
Except for the spade design, I like
Modiano cards, specifically the "
Texas Poker" line (which is the stock
Desjgn were made on). I just can't abide the people behind the brand & the fallout that situation created.
I prefer standard. My old crew hated jumbo. That said now we have some older guys playing who sometimes are sitting at the ends of the table. I always sit in the dealer spot. In the last few years I have acquired a few jumbo setups for those people and I probably my self soon
I was in that same boat..... until I hit the north side of 50.
