How many collectors open decks?

[Aaron]

I think of it like this,
If you buy a new car but then say "I am never going to use this because then it isn`t worth as much" It isn`t worth having the thing. Cars are Similar to Cards(only 1 letter off ), Some people buy them to do work with them and wear them out (magicians), Some people buy them to collect and enjoy and experience all of them (card collectors), and some people buy them to put them on fancy displays and keep them in pristine condition (other collectors).

[Don Boyer]

You left out flourishers, poker players, five-year-olds who think War is the greatest card game ever, bridge-playing moms, etc. 

[Aaron]

Ok some people show them off(Flourishers), Some people make money from them, but some lose money(Poker Players), and some people treat them terrible and wreck them (5-year olds playing war)

and I have no idea what bridge playing moms do.

[Linguist_]

I go with most people in that I tend to purchase two of each deck where possible; one to open and one to keep sealed. However, some decks I have no intention of using (e.g. Bicycle's 'Fashion' series or Flirtatious, Bungalow, Twilight etc) as they are just variations on colour, and those I will be happy with one of.

For actually using cards, I tend to just prefer the most common of the brands - Bicycle for magic and Tally-Ho for flourish (I don't really play cards). I think using strange looking custom cards can put people off. A lot of the time I see card collectors complain that custom decks are using standard faces, but I tend to prefer that. If you're a magician and your cards look bizarre then it can give people the impression that they are being fooled by the deck itself. Of course, there are times when using a non-standard deck can really complement a routine. I'm just quite happy using Bicycle Rider Backs .

This means that although I leave one deck sealed and open another, I never really use the opened deck more than to look at the cards and have a quick play about with them. Then they go back into their box and I go back to my Rider Backs. That being said, if I played around with a deck and thought 'woah, this is awesome' then I'd buy more of that deck, but that doesn't tend to happen. Cards are cards are cards, for the most part. I think one can get bogged down with stocks and finishes when really it's your dexterity that determines how well cards handle.

This also ensures that in the future when I have a wee bairn (or any nosey friends and relatives) who want to see what all these cards look like, there will be an opened deck for them to peruse, and a sealed one to give me peace of mind that I have kept one safe.

Also, modern decks now will not be modern decks in 50 or 100 years.

[Don Boyer]

Also, modern decks now will not be modern decks in 50 or 100 years.

A hundred years?  Is there something in the fountain water there that I don't know about? 

Modern decks won't be modern in ten or twenty years, never mind fifty.  People still clamor for decks from the '80s and '90s.  I mentioned elsewhere that there seems to be a certain "golden age" of playing cards, a point that started somewhere in the '60s with improvements in stock, finishes and manufacturing processes and ended somewhere in the early-to-middle '80s when quality started getting sacrificed for efficiency and lower costs, a trend that has continued nearly non-stop to the present.  A more precise end would be when USPC stopped making all of their decks with traditional cutting methods and went for the modern "face up" cut.