I wasn't directed at anyone, just speaking in general. I'm not sure but I think a few post may have been deleted.
Not by me. Perhaps the author(s) edited them?
I've finally done a side-by-side comparison with the D&D Steamboats and the Cincinnati USPC
Don, what year where your old steamboats produced? You said transition period but I am not familiar.
I did a little research and learned that Steamboats were a regular USPC brand up to the mid-late '90s when they were discontinued. Popular demand led to a reprinting of the deck at some point in the '00s. I have that reprinting, not the old-school originals.
The transition period is when USPC shuttered the old Cincinnati plant (actually in Norwood, OH) and moved across the Ohio River to Erlanger, KY. It's just another suburb of Cincinnati, just like Norwood, but it's in a different state - and it actually puts the company closer to the local international airport.
The transition began at some point in 2009 during the move to the new plant with brand new machines. While they were just about fully moved in around August or so, there was a while that they were using Cincinnati-labeled tucks and putting Erlanger-printed cards in them - if you have a deck of their standard brands from around that time with a black seal rather than blue or red, there's a good chance it was made in Kentucky.
Normally this wouldn't make a big difference, except for one thing: the staff at the print shop were still learning the ropes and tweaking the new hardware. This resulted in some inferior-quality decks, both standard and custom. This "breaking-in" phase didn't end until sometime late into 2010, by which point they'd pretty much used up the old Cincinnati tucks and were using ones stating the Erlanger address on them.
At this point, the decks they make now, particularly the custom models, exceed what they were capable of making in Ohio on the aging equipment there. Bicycle Standard, however, is still a little on the soft side quality-wise, likely due to a decision by management to make the decks less costly to produce. They probably lowered the "Q-level" (quality control) at which the decks are made; the levels go from lowest, Q5, up to Q1, with each better level higher adding up to more staff manning the machines to prevent errors in printing. Most custom decks people deal with here are made at Q1. In addition, they've started using a slightly thinner stock for the Standards as well as many custom decks - not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but some people prefer thicker cards. The reason for that was they were having some difficulties with the new equipment and ink transfer to the paper - they found the thinner stock worked better.
