Blue Choice Deck by Ben Kolozsi

[Reylek]

Hey everyone.  The newest design and color in the Choice lineup from Ben Kolozsi will be released at Penguin tomorrow (Wednesday the 21st).  This is the first-ever deck in the Choice lineup to be blue, and it's also the first to offer a wildly different design from the original Choice decks.

Ben was inspired by the classic and now-unavailable Stud decks and worked hard with USPCC to get the clearance for this awesome tribute design.

We used the new Thin Crush stock from USPCC to really emulate the feel and handling of the vintage decks.  This stock feels amazing - super thin and snappy, yet remarkably durable for such a thin stock.  You really need to feel it to see what the fuss is about.  AFAIK, fewer than 6 other decks on the market have used this stock so far.

This is designed to be a playable/performable deck, so it's not super duper custom.  We do have a custom back, tuck, Ace of Spades, and 3 Jokers (because the old decks had 3 jokers, and we wanted to stick with the tribute theme).  There's also a double-backer included.  Faces and courts are Arrco style.

Those of you in Card Club have had your hands on these for a few weeks, and all the feedback I've gotten is that people really love the feel/handling as well as the fabulous shade of blue.  These have been my favorite EDC deck for the past couple of months, I really love them.

We only had 2,000 printed, and you can get them at Penguin tomorrow.  I seem to be having some trouble with the photo uploads, so I've included an imgur link.  Thanks!

http://imgur.com/a/KXQgJ

[Don Boyer]

Normally the biggest reason people have trouble with uploads is file size limits, but your photos don't appear to exceed them.

[Don Boyer]

They really do remind me of old Studs - very cool design.  Three identical jokers is a nice touch.

[Fess]

They really do remind me of old Studs - very cool design.  Three identical jokers is a nice touch.

Yea me too. I only have one old deck of beaten to hell Studs left. Sad situation there.

I'm trying (pretending to try) cutting back so, I'm (probably) not going to buy a brick but I need some of these. 

[Reylek]

The decks are available now, link below.

We have price break bundles of 3 and 12 decks.  ALL quantities (even single decks) have free shipping in the US.

http://www.penguinmagic.com/p/7524

Enjoy!

[Fess]

Free shipping even on singles?! Sick and wrong Kevin, sick AND wrong!

Mine will be on the way tomorrow probably. I didn't get time to order some until later in the day. To anyone who hasn't experience with Penguin Magic yet. They ship very quickly and have quite the selection of Playing Cards as well as a monstrous selection of various Magic whatnot's and all that. Don't be put off by the crazy layout and look of the site! Penguin is good.

[Reylek]

Thanks for the kind words.    Yes, the layout of the site does take a bit of getting used to, but we definitely pride ourselves on our shipping and customer service!

[Connor X]

Is thin crush stock new to the USPCC?

[Fess]

Is thin crush stock new to the USPCC?

This is a seemingly easy question to ask, the answer being is somewhat more complicated than a yes and a no. To my knowledge USPC uses two kinds of paper stocks. The feel and thinness is due to pressing the stock to a desired thickness. Don will chime in here at some point and explain things better than I can but ultimately what we know as stock and think of as different papers, isn't the case. I think it's safe to say that thin crush stock may be a new term for something we've seen on decks before there is no reinventing the wheel going on at USPC since the wheel has already been invented and it's damn good.

[Don Boyer]

Is thin crush stock new to the USPCC?

This is a seemingly easy question to ask, the answer being is somewhat more complicated than a yes and a no. To my knowledge USPC uses two kinds of paper stocks. The feel and thinness is due to pressing the stock to a desired thickness. Don will chime in here at some point and explain things better than I can but ultimately what we know as stock and think of as different papers, isn't the case. I think it's safe to say that thin crush stock may be a new term for something we've seen on decks before there is no reinventing the wheel going on at USPC since the wheel has already been invented and it's damn good.

Everything I know about USPC stocks, I learned from Kevin Reylek.

USPC uses all the same paper, per se.  They get giant rolls of the stuff, layer two of them together and slather a layer of graphite-infused glue between them - the end result being pasteboard, the stuff playing cards are made of.

"Thin crush" would likely just be referring to how much pressure is applied when sandwiching the two layers of paper together with the layer of glue between.  They offer their paper in two thickness ranges, Bicycle (generally lighter) and Bee Casino (generally heavier/thicker) and there's a degree of overlap between the two ranges.  You don't get to choose a specific thickness in that range - it's "Bicycle" or "Bee Casino," period.  If forced to guess, I'd say it's Bicycle, because Bicycle is the thinner stock range, but I could be mistaken.

The only caveat to that is the Golden Rule - he who has (and spends) the gold, makes the rules, by which I mean that if a customer throws enough money at them, they'll likely do as nearly any business will and bow to whatever whims the customer has, but we're talking about a LOT of money, more than the typical customer is willing to spend.  This also applies if you're a long-time, high-profile and/or steady customer who regularly spends a lot with them - someone like David Blaine and not Joe First-Time-Kickstarter.

[Reylek]

Yup, quick rundown on the USPCC stocks as explained to me by them...

Bicycle and Bee stock are the same paper, but crushed to different thicknesses.  These were the only 2 options available in the recent past.  Thin Crush  (No official name yet) is the same paper, but with the pressure cranked up all the way to crush it to as thin as the USPCC machines will go.

So yes Thin Crush is a new offering from USPCC (to my knowledge no more than about half a dozen decks have been printed on it so far) and it basically puts us at options of Thin, Medium, and Thick to choose from when printing there.  Each is good, each has its purpose, and a lot of what people prefer will come down to personal preference.

[Don Boyer]

Yup, quick rundown on the USPCC stocks as explained to me by them...

Bicycle and Bee stock are the same paper, but crushed to different thicknesses.  These were the only 2 options available in the recent past.  Thin Crush  (No official name yet) is the same paper, but with the pressure cranked up all the way to crush it to as thin as the USPCC machines will go.

So yes Thin Crush is a new offering from USPCC (to my knowledge no more than about half a dozen decks have been printed on it so far) and it basically puts us at options of Thin, Medium, and Thick to choose from when printing there.  Each is good, each has its purpose, and a lot of what people prefer will come down to personal preference.

Good to know.  Do you have figures on what the caliper thickness ranges are for Thin, Medium (which I presume is Bicycle) and Thick (which I presume is Bee Casino)?

[Reylek]

Yes, Medium is Bicycle and Thick is Bee, USPCC still refers to those by the trademarked brand names.

At one point I was given a caliper thickness range, but it was purely numerical, it didn't have units attached.  There was one point of overlap - the thickest point of Bike was the thinnest point of Bee.  So feasibly/theoretically there could be 2 decks out there that are identical thickness while being accurately labeled with one as Bike and the other as Bee, but it's super unlikely.

Generally it's pretty easy to tell the difference by feel as to which stock a deck is printed on.

[Fess]

Good to know.  Do you have figures on what the caliper thickness ranges are for Thin, Medium (which I presume is Bicycle) and Thick (which I presume is Bee Casino)?

http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=9716.msg124126#msg124126

David has the answer of thickness for Blue Choice there. From there you can find many others that he's done which give thickness range you're looking for.

From my personal findings, which are more mad science than science, I'd say it could be the thinnest stock out at the moment. Thin crush is pretty thin.

[Don Boyer]

Good to know.  Do you have figures on what the caliper thickness ranges are for Thin, Medium (which I presume is Bicycle) and Thick (which I presume is Bee Casino)?

http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=9716.msg124126#msg124126

David has the answer of thickness for Blue Choice there. From there you can find many others that he's done which give thickness range you're looking for.

From my personal findings, which are more mad science than science, I'd say it could be the thinnest stock out at the moment. Thin crush is pretty thin.

He says they're thin - but not much else.  No comparison to existing standard stocks.  He compares them to individual decks, but doesn't tell what stock those decks used; that's not a good way to compare anyway, since USPC's stocks come in a thickness range rather than a fixed thickness - even within the same print run there can be thickness variances.

[Reylek]

In my measurements of decks printed on standard Bicycle stock (various) and decks printed on Thin Crush stock (also various) the full 52-card deck is typically a slightly more than a full millimeter thinner when comparing the two stocks.  It's noticeable purely by feel.  It'd be like pulling 3-4 cards out of your Bike deck.

[Connor X]

Thanks, that's interesting.

They really do remind me of Studs, and they seem pretty good. I'm going to have to get a deck next time I go on a card buying spree.