I haven't seen aristocrat stingers with aristo branding anywhere but this eBay seller. I've had my eye on the aristocrat club specials red and blue no border for the last 2 years. Never seen these before. I'm sure I would have if there were a few in circulation. These are dated Dec 2003. This is the first time I've ever seen them like this.
You would know better then I about border no border slights.
I'm almost positive these casino aristocrats are either as thick or thicker then Bee's. I know many custom decks claim to use Bee stock. There seems to be a difference in actual casino bee stock and just bee stock. The Foxwoods aristocrats I handled were thicker then anything Ive ever held.
Technically, these aren't Stingers. Stingers get the name from having the Bee logo in the little ovals in the corners instead of the four suit pips found on the ovals in this deck. But they're made to give an appearance similar to Bee Stingers. It's just USPC capitalizing on a good idea across brands.
Thick stock is a hallmark of the Aristocrat brand - but it's not as stiff or as heavy as Bee Casino. As far as custom decks are concerned, there is no more Bee standard stock - it's all Bicycle or Bee Casino.
But back to the point, the actual weight of the paper in Bee Casino is heavier than Aristocrat. Aristocrat is thicker because it's not compressed as tightly as Bee Casino stock when it's pressed together from two paper layers with glue in-between. That additional compression also gives the Bee Casino paper that extra stiffness that's characteristic of a Bee Casino deck.
Does USPC still make Aristocrat, Bee standard, Tally Ho, etc.? Sort of, kind of, not really. They're not controlling the stock thickness/weight as tightly as they used to - they don't even measure the paper using grams per square inch (gsm) anymore. They make the paper however it suits their needs for a given product, and that's it. Custom deck orders are given two choices, as mentioned above, and measured strictly by thickness. Those stocks come in a range of thickness, and you don't get to pick a specific thickness; it comes out how it comes out, that's it. The thickness ranges even overlap - a thick Bicycle stock can actually be thicker than a thin Bee Casino stock. Sounds crazy, but they're literally holding all of the cards, so they get to make the rules.