David Blaine's White Lions series B decks are marked for both suit and value -- however, whilst you can read the value from across the room, to read the suit you need to be fairly close to the cards. For years I considered it to be the best.
However, the Sharps by LPCC has to be the best marked deck, hands down. Both suit and value can be read across the room, and you can even hand the deck for inspection -- unless a person's eyes are trained to reading it, nobody will be able to find the markings. The Sharps are the only marked deck I know of which passes the riffle test.
My 8 year old cousin was able to find the markings on the Madison Dealers in around 20 seconds, and the 1800s in about 1 minute. Ellusionist markings are far too easy to spot.
Shade decks are harder to spot, to be certain. You practically need to know what you're looking for.
I don't find the Bicycle Series 1800s to be all that easy to spot. I've shown them off to magicians who have been utterly unable to spot the markings, even after being told it's a marked deck. Even knowing where they are, it takes me a little practice to read them correctly.
Something to bear in mind when using marked decks. In general, marking systems fall into two categories: encoded and plain. An encoded marking system requires that you memorize a specific pattern/system in order to read the cards, regardless of the precise method used to mark them (plain print, shade/juice, scratch, daub, etc.). The problem with encoded systems is that every encoded-system deck design uses a different code - for each new deck you want to use, you have a new code to learn. Some codes have a certain amount of "portability" in that they can be similar from deck design to deck design, like codes that employ a binary marking system, but you still need to know the code and it will still be different enough from deck design to deck design that you have to memorize something in order to make them work.
A plain system is not really a system at all - it's plain markings, easily read but only if you know where to look for them. A crappy deck with a plain marking system can be spotted from a mile away, but a good one can be every bit as subtle as an encoded deck - and you don't have to memorize anything in order to use them effectively. Series 1800 falls into this category, as do the Ultimate Marked Deck, GT Speedreaders and the various iterations of the Gambler's Deck.
Series 1800 is the best deal of the lot - same price as the unmarked versions and hard to spot in a riffle test because of the aged-look effect, which in essence "muddies the water," making every part of the card back look a little different from card to card, so you have no idea where marks might be hidden. UMDs are great for poker and other card games, but difficult to find - they're out of print and can't be reprinted, at least not on a Bicycle Rider Back design, which is what the originals were made on. GT Speedreaders are made perfectly for magicians - the marks are upside-down relative to the spectator, making them easily read but difficult for them to spot on casual observation. However, the marks are also not in the correct corner to make them readable in someone's hand, so they're far less effective in card games. Gambler's Decks are great tools - not just marked, but stacked and stripped - but the myriad markings on them just seem too easy to spot to me. I can use them for magic but I'd never even consider using them at a card table.
My favorite application for Gambler's Decks is to use them in concert with an Invisible deck - when the cards are in stack order, there are marks on the top card to tell you what the BOTTOM card is as well as the top card (and many other bits of info - it's real overkill). I'll break out the Gambler's Deck, cut it a few times, let the spectator make the final cut, then show them their chosen card - the bottom card, the one they cut to - all the while telling them that not only can I not see the bottom card but that I can't even see the back of the bottom card, so if the deck was marked, "it would do me no good!" Of course, the opposite is true, but they don't need to know that, do they?
I use the Invisible deck to make the reveal, often by having it "haunt" the Gambler's Deck - I'll toss in patter about the deck being a gift from a deceased magician or something to that effect.
Gambler's Decks were originally printed in the Bicycle Rider Back design - but went out of print and can't be made in Rider Backs any more. For a brief while, they were being made with a horrible-looking generic card back, but now they come in Bicycle Maiden Backs - to me, they're actually more attractive than the Rider Back, but to the spectator, most can't tell the difference because of the similarities in the design. GT Speedreaders come in the Bicycle Mandolin Back design, another "Rider Back analogue" created for making marked decks and other magician's gaffs.
(For those of you who are new, the reason why none of these decks can be reprinted with the Rider Back design [#808] has to do with USPC's Legal Department trying to defend the art as their intellectual property. In terms of copyright, they're in the public domain, but in terms of trademark, they can be defended - but only if the manufacturer doesn't "water down" the trademark by allowing alterations. So anyone making custom magic cards with USPC can no longer get altered versions of their classic card backs, such as the Bicycle Rider Back, as well as their unique Jokers and Aces of Spades. The company did, however, work with two different groups of magicians to create the two analogues, the Maiden Back [#813] and the Mandolin Back [#809] - unique, original designs that are close enough to the Rider Back to fool an unobservant layman but different enough to not be a Rider Back for trademark purposes. The new designs are still protected under copyright, but apparently copyright law is a bit more flexible about making alterations to copyrighted designs without diluting their legal protections as intellectual property.)
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