I need to get to the bottom of something that's been bothering me for a long time.
I seriously got into learning magic with cards back around 2005. Since about that time, there has been a deck of blue, Rider Back playing cards in one of the drawers in the kitchen of my mom's house. I've since moved to a couple different apartments, and often when I'm back at my mom's, I'll bring that deck out and mess around with it as I wait for laundry or whatever it is that I'm doing there.
As anyone who does sleight of hand with cards knows, decks that get frequent use don't last very long (for our purposes, anyway), especially Bikes. I can;t even begin to imagine how many decks of cards I've used as my "man deck" since 2005, and I don't want to think of how much I've spent on them either, but it seems to me that I can buy a deck of Standard Bikes and after day or two of use they don't seem to fan right anymore. Springs, dribbles, shuffles (false and otherwise), etc... will kill a deck pretty quickly. Tally Hos tend to last a little longer, maybe double the time of Standard Bikes, in my experience.
Over the years, I've handled that blue, Rider Back deck in my mom's kitchen for a combined hours and hours worth of time. The box is falling apart, I have to be gentle opening the flaps so they don't fall off. I'd be surprised if all 52 cards are still in there. One card that I usually leave on top, has a horizontal crease down the middle from being bent, and I set it aside while I handle the rest so it doesn't throw me off.
Here's the weird part: despite all of that, this Rider deck handles perfectly. The fans are the best of any deck I've seen, and it spreads like butter (pardon the cliche).
My question is: how is this possible? I have three theories:
1) This is a "Rider Back" deck, not a "Standard Back" deck. It's from the days when Bikes were made in Cincinnati and not Erlanger. Maybe the cards were just that much better back then? Maybe the quality has dropped that drastically. I don't know. I can't remember.
2) Sometimes I wonder if the cards have in a way, reverse aged. Cards start to fan poorly because of the oil from our hands and dirt and dust. Maybe the cards did fan poorly for a while, but now they're so old that they've become evenly coated all over with nastiness and that has made them fan well again. I'm going on on a limb with this one, but maybe?
3) There's a portrait in an attic somewhere of a deck of cards aging horribly.
What do you think? Any insights?
I seriously got into learning magic with cards back around 2005. Since about that time, there has been a deck of blue, Rider Back playing cards in one of the drawers in the kitchen of my mom's house. I've since moved to a couple different apartments, and often when I'm back at my mom's, I'll bring that deck out and mess around with it as I wait for laundry or whatever it is that I'm doing there.
As anyone who does sleight of hand with cards knows, decks that get frequent use don't last very long (for our purposes, anyway), especially Bikes. I can;t even begin to imagine how many decks of cards I've used as my "man deck" since 2005, and I don't want to think of how much I've spent on them either, but it seems to me that I can buy a deck of Standard Bikes and after day or two of use they don't seem to fan right anymore. Springs, dribbles, shuffles (false and otherwise), etc... will kill a deck pretty quickly. Tally Hos tend to last a little longer, maybe double the time of Standard Bikes, in my experience.
Over the years, I've handled that blue, Rider Back deck in my mom's kitchen for a combined hours and hours worth of time. The box is falling apart, I have to be gentle opening the flaps so they don't fall off. I'd be surprised if all 52 cards are still in there. One card that I usually leave on top, has a horizontal crease down the middle from being bent, and I set it aside while I handle the rest so it doesn't throw me off.
Here's the weird part: despite all of that, this Rider deck handles perfectly. The fans are the best of any deck I've seen, and it spreads like butter (pardon the cliche).
My question is: how is this possible? I have three theories:
1) This is a "Rider Back" deck, not a "Standard Back" deck. It's from the days when Bikes were made in Cincinnati and not Erlanger. Maybe the cards were just that much better back then? Maybe the quality has dropped that drastically. I don't know. I can't remember.
2) Sometimes I wonder if the cards have in a way, reverse aged. Cards start to fan poorly because of the oil from our hands and dirt and dust. Maybe the cards did fan poorly for a while, but now they're so old that they've become evenly coated all over with nastiness and that has made them fan well again. I'm going on on a limb with this one, but maybe?
3) There's a portrait in an attic somewhere of a deck of cards aging horribly.
What do you think? Any insights?