Don, thank you very much for your appreciation and sorry for my poor English. It's not my native tongue and I really have difficulties in choosing of a correct words.
I was trying to say that the Icon decks became popular among Wynn Casino visitors and card collectors and had a tendency to go outside of the Casino into public hands. The Wynn Casino was not happy that so many of their "floor-used" decks had got into public hands - that was the main reason why these cards were recalled and why we could find a lot of them uncancelled.
I suspect that might not be entirely accurate. Nevada state gaming laws prohibit casinos from releasing decks made for use on the casino floor unless they're either canceled or the style/color is being phased out and is no longer to be used on the floor.
This is the normal life cycle of a casino deck in the state of Nevada, as I understand it - someone please correct me if I'm wrong:
If the deck design is still in use on the floor, a deck (or a stack of decks, as USPC now offers pre-shuffled stacks of up to six or eight decks) hits the floor for use. A more modern casino will use the newer continuous-shuffle deck shoes - cards are gathered after they're played, stacked into a chute on the shoe and the cards in the shoe get shuffled with the cards in the chute, making card counting pretty much impossible, as the shuffles take place with a high rate of frequency. Cheaper joints that can't afford that will resort to using pre-shuffled shoes of eight decks - counting isn't impossible, but it's very difficult and the shoes never get to even the half-way mark before the cards are removed, shuffled and placed in play again. A typical deck lasts around 8 hours on the floor, give or take.
After the deck has been "consumed" by use, the decks and the empty boxes are shipped to a Nevada state prison with a special work program. The cards are resorted into individual decks by the inmates, who then marker-up the sides of the deck, place it in a box (rarely with the jokers or barcoded control cards, since they're never floor-used) and cut a corner in a very ragged manner off the deck, box and all. Some years back they used to drill the cards, but apparently some people found a way to make a drilled-out canceled deck look unused and started trying to swap them into play with a bit of sleight of hand. The prisoners are heavily supervised and removing cards qualifies as possession of contraband. After sorting and boxing, these decks are either returned to the casino for souvenirs to sell or forwarded to a company like Paul-Son who sells them all over the country.
If the deck style and/or color is phased out and replaced by some new style/color, any remaining cards in the old style/color in stock are free to be sold off, still sealed in the original packaging. They end up all over the place and are highly sought after because of their quality and rarity. They might get sold in bulk, given to certain guests, handed out to employees, etc. but the majority are simply sold to shops which deal in casino decks - Gambler's General Store's brick-and-mortar location was one of them, before the company moved to Texas and got renamed Gambler's Warehouse. Someone I know who used to live in Nevada tells me they frequently showed up at flea markets and swap meets; he said a patient collector could really find some gems checking those places out.
