What qualities make the perfect deck of cards for magic?

[52whitelions]

I have a lot of preferences for what a deck must have in order to be functional for card tricks.  The stock, cut, traditional faces, fanning ability...etc.  But I was wondering what the rest of you think.  What are your opinions on what makes a great deck for magic and why? 

[HolyJJ]

That's a good question brother... and the answers you get will vary from person to person, because "good" and "bad" (in terms of how cards feel and handle) is completely subjective. As they say, "one man's food is another man's poison".

I do gambling sleights, rather than cardistry or magic... and so for me, gambling routines like what Richard Turner, Jason England, and Darwin Ortiz do, those are the types I take inspiration from. So I do lots of false dealing, false shuffles, and riffle stacking.

Therefore, I need cards to be traditionally cut -- it makes faro and interlace shuffles so much easier for me.‎

Given my style of handling cards, I need cards to be pretty stiff, very durable, and also, to be pretty slick... and ‎that is why LPCC's diamond finish (which is the same as EPCC's master finish) is my favourite. What I like about the diamond/master finish coating, is that when I need to extract a card using just a fingertip, the coating has enough grip/tack to it to allow a card to be extracted effortlessly... and yet the cards slide through each other for false shuffles just as beautifully. It's perfect for me.

With USPCC magic finish cards, yeah, they are slick... but due to ridiculously low tack/grip, the first few shuffles with a magic finish deck for me usually result in at least one round of "52 card pickup".‎

I know that many still like USPCC cards, but they are genuinely terrible for me... because USPCC cards just do not last long. With the shuffle work I do, a USPCC deck becomes good for the trash can in pretty much one or two days. My LPCC and EPCC decks ‎usually last a month. 
‎
USPCC cards ‎like the latest Black Lions decks feel more fragile than ever before... and so I don't have confidence in them, knowing that just a few rough shuffles later, the cards will end up having difficult to remove bends in them. 
‎
(Having said that though, the White Lions‎ decks by USPCC were very good -- relatively durable, and had nice thickness)

Many magicians swear by Bicycle decks... and the things that make standard Bikes terrible for me, are probably the things that make Bikes perfect for them. 

As for design... I like borderless back designs, purely for the fact that they make false deals more difficult to spot.‎

So to sum it up, ‎a deck with a borderless back design from LPCC/EPCC with diamond/master finish, tends to be perfect for me to do gambling routines.

For MAGIC routines (such as mentalism tricks), there is only one deck I ever use.. and it's one of the few decks I like which doesn't have the diamond/master finish, is the Sharps by LPCC... and that's purely because the marking system (it uses factory shade/juice) is by far the best I have ever come across. 

It's the only marking system that passes the riffle test, and the markings are completely invisible to anybody that hasn't trained their eyes to read the patterns. In fact, it's the ONLY marked deck that I'm willing to hand out for inspection, because no matter how hard anybody tries, they won't see the markings!‎

I think that for magic, having a marked deck which I can read very clearly (and that too from across a table!) ‎is priceless. And the fact that the Sharps have a thick and durable stock, nice coating, and are traditionally cut, is like icing on the cake for me!

[Magic_Orthodoxy]

"That's a good question brother... and the answers you get will vary from person to person, because "good" and "bad" (in terms of how cards feel and handle) is completely subjective. As they say, "one man's food is another man's poison".

Could not agree more... that's why you have Chevy AND Ford and that's why there is always more than one thing on the menu

As a consumer YOU need to know what YOU like. What goes into our preferences? Only 3 things.

1. Card thickness - this is where paper stock comes in, durability and over all ink impact

2. Cut - traditional vs modern, Smooth edges vs "you don't care."

3. and lastly finish. Do you like super slippery cards (magic finish) a more middle of the road feel (air cushion embossing only) or do you prefer smooth cards?

I would then argue that you need to own good samples of stock and finish from all of the major players.
So when a new deck comes out on the market - and they say "Printed from Legends with Classic Finish" you can walk over to your collection and find the deck equivalent

Any other preferences we have will be design.

Do you prefer casino borders to hide your second deals? Do you prefer white borders to hide your reversed cards? Personally I only do magic with red bikes Why?

1. readily available anywhere

2. I like how they feel

3. Instantly recognizable

4. Easy to mark

5. I don't mind tearing them or folding them

6. they match all my gaffs and trick decks.

[Don Boyer]

You really opened a can of worms with this one - there's a million opinions on this, all different to some degree.

Different tricks call for different decks, period.  A deck perfectly suited for one trick might be a horrible choice for another.

In general, you do want quality.  Universally, you want a well-made and durable deck.  I'm pretty much in agreement with most of what was said here.

Bicycle Rider Backs have been the industry standard for so long, there's more gaff cards and gaff decks in that design than in all other card back designs combined, with red backs slightly edging out blue for some strange reason.  The biggest reason besides this for a magician to get them is that they can be had cheap.  Wear out a pack in a week, it only costs you a buck and change when purchased in bulk.  Even if a custom deck is good enough to last a month, the overall monthly cost of cards will be lower with Rider Backs and you won't cringe as much when you damage one as opposed to something from a limited-edition deck that's out of print.  If you opt to go this route, I'd recommend trying to get the "Bicycle 807" decks sold by USPC through Wingra Direct (shopbicyclecards.com), especially if you can get them in bulk from a wholesaler - these are identical in every way to the cards in the more modern, "Standard" Bicycle box issued since 2009, but have the traditional box design instead of the modern one - there are specific tricks that call for using this box over the other, owing largely to the image of a card back on the back of the box.

In regard to the term "finish," USPC uses it in a confusing manner and people get it mixed up as a result.  I used to think that the finish was the special coating on the cards themselves, the lamination of a plastic-like chemical that gives cards their shine and some of their slipperiness.

I was wrong!

In the print industry, a card's finish is its texture.  In playing cards, there's a general grouping of two categories - embossed and smooth.  USPC sells smooth as Ivory Finish, Smooth Finish and a few other names.  They sell embossed cards under a variety of names - Air-Cushion Finish (which they've trademarked), Cambric Finish, Linen Finish, Linoid Finish, High Finish and a few others.  Magic Finish, however, is a misnomer - it's not a finish, but a coating that's applied to the paper to make it especially slippery. Both embossed and smooth cards have been sold with the Magic Finish name on them.  Some artists have simply referred to their decks by other names, despite that it's still got that coating on it - Premium Finish, Apocalyptic Finish, even as Air-Cushion or Cambric.  Why USPC does this, I have no idea - thinking as a spectator, if I see a magician whip out a pack that says "Magic Finish" on the box, I'm going to be suspicious of that deck - wouldn't you?  However, Ellusionist to this day still uses the original code name that USPC was using when they tested the coating on the Gold Arcane deck - while that deck is printed as "Air-Cushion Finish" as well as some 2010/2011 White Arcanes, all their decks since then have said "Performance Coating" (with one print run of one deck erroneously printed as "Performance Finish").

Now, USPC makes no difference whatsoever about their embossing - all their embossed cards are made in the same fashion, embossed in the same pattern and to about the same depth, regardless of the finish branding used.  The only difference is thickness of the paper, and that's variable to some degree - they have a thin range called "Bicycle Stock" and a thicker, stiffer range called "Bee Casino Stock," but the two ranges actually overlap and a deck producer or artist can't choose a specific thickness, just a range.

Unlike USPC, Expert PCC has different depths to their embossing.  My working theory is that, given a paper of the same or very similar thickness, a smooth card is stiffer than an embossed card and a more deeply embossed card is less stiff than a more shallow embossed card.  Do a Google search for "CARD CULTURE Special Issue 1" for more info - CARD CULTURE is 52 Plus Joker's monthly digital magazine for members only founded in December of 2014, and we also print Clear the Decks, which is a print quarterly that's been in print for a few decades now.  Special Issue 1 was a free, promotional issue circulated to the public as a way of showing card collectors what they've been missing.  One of the articles is a piece I did on Expert PCC's stocks, including photography done in their Midtown Manhattan offices.  It goes into greater depth - and the stock listed there as "Codename: Iron Stock" was eventually released as "Robusto."

With Legends PCC, their decks made in the factory they share with Expert in Taipei has the same properties as some of Expert's stocks - they order stock from the same locations in Europe for that factory, but in some cases they use the same name for a given stock (like Classic) while in other cases they don't (like EPCC's Master/LPCC's Diamond).  However, Legends started introducing new stock/finishes like Emerald, which if I'm not mistaken were printed using a different plant in mainland China and the paper was probably sourced somewhere in Europe, but I'd only be guessing where.  I can't speak authoritatively as to how those stocks stack up.

The reason the embossed cards in general glide better than smooth ones has to do with the same aerodynamic principles that make a golf ball with dimples travel further and faster than a smooth golf ball when hit with the same force and vector.  The dimples create pockets of air that, under the right conditions, will produce an air gap between the card and the table or the card and the rest of the cards in a deck.  Embossings done to different depths will affect the card differently - but the precise details of that effect are unknown as no one's performed scientific tests and released the results.