I'll be surprised if they're more durable than the White Lions. But then again I've seen some people say that the Silver Split Spades are more durable than the WLs, and I was shocked at this because my decks still handle like a dream, so smooth. I have a deck of Coterie Bee playing cards that I use, and they don't last as long as the White Lions when I play with them for a while, even though they're newer, (Sorry Zenneth) I'd get a brick of White Lions if I had the money Although the King of Hearts gaff makes up for it in the Coterie Deck
Imagine something that's not just durable like the White Lions - but also THINNER.
I'm torture-testing a red pack now - I call it the "Coldstone test". My desk at work was made with artificial stone surfaces polished smooth as glass. It tends to be on the chilly side here in winter, and I've been known to put a deck down on the desk - or even a half-finished solitaire game - to find many of the cards bending up at the sides because the surface was too cold. Even in summer, the air conditioning chills the room and the stone just sucks that cold right in, making it cool to the touch.
A good, well-made deck, stacked and placed on this desk, will hardly bend - perhaps the top card of the stack and that's it. Most of the decks I buy - yes, even from the big custom outfits - will bend significantly; the first handful of cards bend up. I left a pack of Legends out for about two-and-a-half hours (most decks being bending in less the five MINUTES); only the top card on a stack of 54 bent up.
I have only one deck that's survived this test without bending at all. A pack of American-made late-model Streamlines from Kentucky. Not one card bent. Interesting, when you think about it. Now if it had a better finish...
BTW: hang on to that KH Coterie Bee card. They'll never print it again. Not unless USPC Legal undergoes surgery to get that stick out of its collective asses... Since the deck's unique art is well past the copyright date, they're trying to defend it as a trademark, but in order to do that, they can't "dilute" the trademark by allowing it to be altered. It's why you won't see new Rider Back gaffs that alter the back design, Ace of Spades or Joker. It's the same reason why Mandolin Backs and Maiden Backs were created. Those designs are quite young and will remain under copyright for at least 75 years after the creator of the design dies - or longer if they extend copyright law yet again. They can be very easily confused with Rider Backs - you can even use old Rider Back gaffs with them or use new gaffs in that design with Rider Backs without spectators noticing the difference - but they're different enough to be unique designs and were specifically create to allow altered backs. And while you can't alter the trademarked Jokers and AoS that USPC makes, you can just as easily replace them with a unique design of your own in a custom deck, letting you alter it any way you see fit for gaff work.
And why does copyright law keep extending the length of time a copyright lasts? Because if they didn't, Mickey Mouse's first movie appearance, "Steamboat Willie", would be a public domain work, making it difficult for the Disney Company to profit from it when anyone can copy and sell it or make things based on it. That would put a version of Mickey Mouse into the public domain as well! Most companies that own aging intellectual property push the boundaries further and further back, totally perverting what copyright law was meant for.
And what was it meant for? It was meant for its creator to have a chance to profit from his original idea, but then to become part of the public trust of ideas from which new ideas and things can be created. If I recall, the first copyright law only lasted for twenty years after the work was created - meaning in most cases the work would become public within the creator's lifetime. But once companies started to hold copyrights and those companies got older, they wanted to own them lock, stock and barrel. Now, not only will the copyright outlive the creator, it will also outlive the culture in which it was created, since practically no one alive at the time it was created will still be alive, either, and never allowing the copyrighted material to sprout new ideas unless the copyright owner gets to keep some share of them, if not the whole thing. There's no contemporary "public trust" any longer. Today, if a young author publishes a book today at age 25 and lives a long healthy life of 100 years (a conservative estimate, since projections indicate that his lifespan will be extended to 120-150 or more due to new medical technologies), that book's copyright won't expire until the year 2163...and that still assumes the companies like Disney don't succeed in pushing the boundaries even further into the future.
But I really like the Legends deck. (now gotta bug the boyfriend to get me one of each mwahahha)
It will come in blue, red - and GREEN!