First, a definition: a card's FINISH is the TEXTURE on the surface of the card. It can have that texture many different ways - embossing, laminating, etc. Many people confuse COATING with FINISH because of some of the trademark terms used by USPC, but the coating is just that, the laminate that goes on the surface of the card.
A very long time ago, back when USPC didn't have a corporate parent and was still an independent company (though they were still buying up every competitor in sight, practically from day one!), there used to be different finishes on cards. Today, that's really no longer the case at that company, beyond the very simple distinctions of "embossed" and "smooth" stocks.
Why, you ask? Simple. Until some time around the 1970s, finishes were actually applied to the paper. The coating used on pasteboard stocks to give them more durability also gave them texture because they were applied with cloth rollers, and just like the cloth rollers used by painters, they can leave a texture on the surface they're rolled over, unless you really lay on a thicker coating and make more than one pass. Different cloths left different textures, hence the trademark names like Linen, Linoid, Cambric, etc.
The problem with using cloth rollers is that the cloth gets clogged quickly with the coating and requires replacement, slowing down production and decreasing efficiency in manufacturing. Some time in the 1970s/1980s, this entire process was simplified by using an embossing process that's performed when the paper is created.
Pasteboard stock is created by USPC by buying large rolls of paper from paper mills and sandwiching together two layers of paper with a layer of glue in-between, glue that's been infused with graphite to give the stock a black core and make it opaque under bright light. The amount of pressure used to press these two layers together is what creates differences in stocks today, and the rollers used to press them together are either smooth, creating a smooth stock, or have a fine, bumpy surface, creating an embossed stock with little pockets in the paper's surface that capture air when the card is gliding against a hard surface, such as a table or another card, reducing friction much like the dimples on a golf ball.
For all modern decks made by USPC in the past three or four decades or so, all embossed stocks are THE SAME on the surface, the only possible difference being the thickness and stiffness of the paper. All smooth stocks from this period are ALSO THE SAME in the same ways that embossed stocks are the same to each other.
Does this mean that ALL PAPER EVERYWHERE used for playing cards is the same? Nope...
Expert PCC does indeed make a difference in their stocks. They acquire stocks that are embossed to different depths, with differing pressure and at differing thicknesses, thus making stocks that are genuinely different from each other in terms of surface appearance and how they perform. Some of their stocks are also used by the Legends PCC, so they, too, benefit from these differences, though I can't speak for the stocks that Legends uses which Expert does not.
But back to USPC...
There's something they offer that's sold under a variety of names, the most common of which being Magic Finish and Performance Coating. It's even been sold as Air Cushion Finish, though it's not the same as the basic, off-the-shelf Bicycle Standards sold at the corner drugstore. For several years now, all custom card orders from USPC receive a special coating - the call it Magic Finish, but it's really a coating, NOT a finish - that gives the cards a slicker, more slippery feel. The coating is distinct in that the cards are indeed more slick and have a sharper, more chemical smell fresh out of the box and even for some time thereafter (my second wife used to be able to identify that smell immediately when I opened a pack - she was actually fond of it). To further confuse matters, this same coating can be found on embossed and smooth stocks, though it is far more commonly used on embossed stocks.
The theory behind why these cards have this new coating is that, like all US playing card manufacturers, USPC was required to conform to a new US law that went into effect around the same time they moved from Cincinnati, Ohio to their new facility in Erlanger, Kentucky (a suburb of Cincinnati on the other side of the Ohio River and closer to the local international airport). This law required companies making playing cards to use papers with a higher post-consumer recycled content and to use inks and coatings that were devoid of petroleum products and easily, fully biodegradable. Thus, all USPC cards manufactured today use coatings based on starch and inks based on vegetable dyes, something that most manufacturers outside of the US still don't do. At first, they were having some quality control issues while adjusting to the new laws, but with the development of Magic Finish, the performance of their new decks increased dramatically.
Even their standard cards are somewhat better in quality than they were during the initial runs that came from the Erlanger plant, though some would argue that they're not superior to the cards manufactured in the old Cincinnati plant for a variety or reasons, not the least of which being lower production standards to mass-produce cards more cheaply. But these are subjective opinions - it's something that's difficult if not impossible to measure objectively, and there are so many factors that can affect the quality of even a single print batch compared to another, or even two different decks in a single batch, that it's practically impossible to account for and compensate for them all to make a perfectly consistent deck from pack to pack, batch to batch, year to year. The biggest issue a company like USPC runs into is the paper sources themselves - they don't manufacture their own paper, instead buying it from paper mills and using it to make their pasteboard. Paper is a product that, at its core, is organic and impossible to make 100% consistent from batch to batch. Factor in the issue of adding post-consumer recycled content and you further complicate the consistency issue.
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