Few days I ago I was in China attending a magic lecture, someone came up and showed me the Marverick deck that said Made in China on the tuckcase.
Marverick still is one of USPCC's brands if my memory serves me right, the cards feel 99% the same if not completely identical to Aviator,
I would love to get the same factory manufacture my designs if possible, but it's improbable for me to track down that factory and meet their MOQ even if I could find it.
Yao Ji from Shanghai is perhaps currently the best selling brand/biggest playing cards manufacturer in China, they produce 0.7 Billion decks a year according to their website.
I know many Chinese friends are using Yao Ji deck for their private gambling games, and they use a new deck for every single round,
so a whole night of game will easily trash away a gross or even more decks.
To them, Yao Ji is already more than sufficient for the purpose, it has a reasonable quality, retails only $0.5 USD a deck in China and much less when buy in grosses.
I am sure a manufacturer like Yao Ji could of easily make very high quality playing cards, however, the problem is, Yao Ji, like most Chinese playing cards factories,
don't take small quantity order. (yes, even a 10,000 decks run is still considered a very small quantity to them)
Considering the fact that even intricate iPhone parts were made in China, there's no reason that Chinese playing cards factories cannot produce high quality decks,
it's just they don't have much business incentive to do so as their profit comes from quantity, not quality.
Many of my magic friends and myself included have done quite some research to find playing cards factories in China that produce high quality decks,
unfortunately, by far most Chinese factories that take small quantity order don't produce acceptable quality decks.
I was told that in order for them to manufacture USPCC quality decks, they would have to import paper stock from Germany,
so that the MOQ is way much higher than 15,000 decks.
However, if someone ordered a customized run of decks made with high quality paper stock but didn't use up all that paper stock,
and you are lucky enough to contact the factory right on time, then you will probably be able to print some high quality decks with Made in China price.