I have zero to none knowledge about plastic playing cards. I know that in professional gameplay they are kinda the standard but in private poker rooms, I still prefer the feel and sound of paper playing cards; I guess it comes down to what you are used to.
I've seen some intersting back designs popping up lately, which made curious about the world that I maybe totally miss out on. I would love to here some thoughts about the two big brands and plastic cards in general.
- Who offers the greater variety of collectable decks?
- Which are better quality?
- Is there anything important to know about plastic cards regarding storage, durability? Do they get brittle if not storaged correctly?
- Since plastic isn't the, let's say most environmental friendly component (I know neither are plastic coated paper playing cards 
), is there anything important to keep in mind? What is the plastic with less impact?
- Any care tips?
Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts.
There's a few important things to know.
COPAG and Kem aren't by far the only two makers of plastic decks out there. Kem is well-known in the US and is the only US-based maker I know of, even though they're now, by dint of USPC buying them and Cartamundi buying USPC, part of a Belgian conglomerate of playing card and game manufacturing companies. COPAG is another Cartamundi-owned company, based in Brazil.
Kem decks aren't horrible for the environment at all - in fact, they aren't "plastic" at all, but are made of something called cellulose acetate. It's a chemical derived largely from plants and has no petrochemicals in it.
Kem used to be the gold standard for "plastic" cards. But people have said that after the USPC takeover, the quality has gone down as well as the variety. If you talk to the audience that uses plastic cards the most, and that's hardcore poker players, they rarely buy Kem, sticking more frequently to either COPAG or some of the European makers such as Modiano.
On the subject of collectibility, well... Plastic decks aren't really targeted to collectors, for the most part, with rare exceptions, like the Karnival Death Heads Armour Edition. COPAG does have some cool, interesting designs, like their popular EPOC deck, while Kem tends to stick to basics - simple, two-way card backs, standard faces with standard or jumbo indices, and poker (2.5") or bridge (2.25") widths.
With normal use and care, a plastic deck can last up to twenty years or more. You should never throw plastic cards or slam them to the table in game play - they're likely to crack. Store them in room temperature or slightly cooler conditions, and under normal humidity - not too dry or damp. If they get dirty, they can be washed with a mild soap and water solution - wipe them down on both sides and wipe off the excess moisture, allowing them to dry before collecting them into a pile and boxing them up. If stored for long periods of time, especially under very warm conditions, the ink on plastic cards can actually bleed from one card to the card next to it (I have a vintage plastic deck that this happened to before I owned it). When handling them, keep them away from dust, dirt, food crumbs, grit, sand, etc. - if these get on or between the cards, they can scratch them badly enough that you'd need to replace them. Inks on most plastic decks tend to be a little less vivid than they are on paper decks - this has pluses and minuses. On the one hand, there's no really bright colors to irritate the eyes or distract the card player, but on the other hand, it also means there's a bit less contrast between colors, so the printed images will look a little faded and will only fade more over time.
As far as environmental impact, consider the following.
A typical poker game, played between a handful of friends and meeting once a week, will go through two paper decks in about one to two weeks on average - roughly 75 decks a year. A matched "poker set" pair of plastic deck might last three to five years under such heavy use. Now, the plastic deck was made using petrochemicals and isn't very recyclable. But only paper cards made in the US are required to have no petrochemicals in their manufacturing and are printed on high post-consumer content recycled paper. (It's required by US law for just over a decade now.) The US Playing Card Company uses vegetable-based dyes and starch-based coatings on their playing cards in order to conform to current US law.
If your paper cards were sourced from outside the US, they almost certainly have petrochemicals in the ink dyes and plastic coatings used to make them, and as such are largely thought to be unrecyclable. (Maybe the EU has more environmentally-conscious manufacturing laws, but China almost certainly does not, and they make more playing cards than any other nation in the world, including the vast majority of cheaply-made and cheaply-sold decks typically found in "dollar stores.")
If they are US-made (and USPC makes about 90% or more of the cards made in the US), sure, they're easily recyclable, but recycling isn't without its costs, in terms of the energy expended to make the waste product into recycled raw materials and back into a sellable product again, while that pair of terrible, plastic decks will last as long as perhaps 225 to 350 paper decks, putting far less materials back into the waste management system and consuming far less energy with the conversion of waste into raw materials and back into products. So if you measured this in terms of a carbon footprint, the plastic decks have a very strong chance of having a much smaller carbon footprint due to their incredibly long usable life span when compared to the more easily recycled paper decks, despite the poor recyclability of many plastics.
Even more interesting to remember - if these poker buddies bought Kem cards rather than some other brand, they have no plastic in them at all; they're made out of plant-based cellulose acetate that can decompose over time much faster and with fewer harmful environmental effects than a regular plastic deck. That was always a key selling point for Kem decks, even back in the days when recycling anything was a rarity in the US, the exception rather than the rule.
Below is some interesting trivia on plastics and recycling - you can skip it if you have no interest, but I recommend reading it.
In the US, recyclable plastics come in grades that are number-coded - you'll see the three-arrowed-triangle "recyclable" symbol on it with a number in the center. Any plastic without that symbol and number is considered unrecyclable, period. But what most consumers don't realize is that the higher the number grade, the more difficult and costly it is to recycle that plastic, thus the less likely that it ever will be recycled. The numbers go all the way from 1 to 7, with 1 being the easiest to recycle - most municipal recycling programs will handle grade 1 and 2 plastics, a much smaller number will handle grade 3, and virtually none will handle grades 4 through 7.
Even in cases where items are made of the "right" plastic, sometimes the design of the product being made is such that recycling becomes difficult if not impractical, which is why many state and local governments are passing laws restricting or prohibiting the use of plastic shopping bags. Even when they're made of grade 1 plastic, because of how thin and light they are, they tend to get caught in the gears of the machinery used to recycled plastics, jamming them up and causing breakdowns, thus few recycling plants are equipped to process them and most won't.
The irony is that when these bags first came out, people were given the impression that by using them, we were "saving the trees" by no longer using paper bags. Since then, they've become an ecological nightmare, being the largest contributor to the increasing presence of micro-particles of plastic in the world's waters and thus its marine life - and eventually, into us as we eat the marine life, or as we like to call it, "seafood." We're still trying to figure out the future health effects this will have, but no one is painting a rosy picture of it... In my state (New York), a statewide ban on plastic shopping bags went into effect this month, as well as a five-cent sales tax on paper bags, in order to encourage the use of reusable cloth bags - I now keep a supply of them in my car and a really soft and easily-folded one in my back pocket for last-minute purchases.
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