Alright folks, I had a lot of inquiries about how the cards I got from China handled and felt, I've jotted some thoughts down below:
GYT Plastic Playing Cards: Poker Size, Jumbo Index, 100% PVC plastic
Manufacturer: It appears to be JSC Printing, which is a subsidiary of Jinyi Stationary Co. based in Yangzhou, China, by doing a bit of detective work.
I purchased the cards from aliexpress
here.
The link to the printing company is
here. They seem to only deal in high MOQ's. May be an option for a GB down the road, but I digress.
Price: Just a hair under $15 shipped per two deck setup of one red and one black backed deck.
Feel: They feel better than I thought they would. I was highly disappointed in some of the Chinese stocks that were really textured on the back and glossy and with absolutely no texture on the face of the card that made the card an absolute mess. The card backs are smooth to the touch and the faces of the cards have a bit of texture to them. The product description of the cards by the manufacturer advertises a new "double frosted coating" finishing technique that intrigued me enough to buy the cards. It feels pretty nice.
The cards are definitely thick. Definitely more on the spectrum of the Dal Negro than Kem. As a matter of fact, the card stock thickness feels very similar to the King Australia cards I last reviewed. It is close enough that it would not surprise me if they shared the same manufacturer. The finishes of the cards were just different. The Kings had a slightly textured back and a totally matte finish on the face that is not at all glossy feeling. Both the Kings and these cards offer the feeling of a paper card (though I know it's plastic) rather than a cheap, plastic feel of other Chinese stocks.
With shuffling and bridging, the cards definitely feel thick and heavy and are not as flexible. They're not as stiff as Dal Negro Monkey and Liberty cards, but they're up there. Still, I don't think a 3-4 hour session of shuffling these would result in very much soreness.
Looks: The card back design is nice. A little bit busy if anything with a rectangular design with a diamond design embedded into it. Still, it looks nice and classy and is distinctive. The card stock is a pretty bright white as well. It is easy to read cards from across the table. No cream colored backs on the number cards, though
I would score them higher here if they did. The outer borders on the card backs look even and don't appear to be uneven at first glance. The blacks are bold and the red cards are striking. These are a PVC plastic card, we'll see how easily they fade with use.
Durability: They seem like they would hold up well, but the first few Google results for "GYT playing cards" return marked card websites. I hope that's not a foreshadowing of things to come. We'll leave this one TBD.
Case: They're packaged well. Comes with a free cut card with each deck of cards, but it's of poor quality. Cards are shrink wrapped and housed by an individual plastic case with a paper sleeve. The packaging is elegant but the plastic housing seems like it is thin and would crack easily.
Now to the score:
Price: 8/10
Feel: 8/10
Looks: 7.5/10
Durability: 6/10
Case: 6.5/10
Overall: 72/100
I wasn't expecting to score these so high, honestly, but I was pleasantly surprised by these. Definitely worth the trouble to get them (only 10 days from order to door from China) if you're interested in a new card to change things up a bit. If you poke around Aliexpress a bit, it seems like the same company has multiple offerings for bridge size, standard index cards in multiple designs, if that's your thing.
Review Scale for Reference:
85-100: My dream, ideal card that I would use every game if I wanted to
74-84: An excellent card that I would buy a couple of extra set ups of when the first set starts to get worn down
64-73: A good card that I would be happy to use with my home game
50-63: A passable card that I would use for a home game if I had no other better options available to me
30-49: A not so great card that I would carry with me in my travel bag that I wouldn't care if it got damaged or lost
0-29: Wouldn't use in any game. Fodder for my 2 year old son to play with and destroy.
