Plastic is absolutely a big step up over paper. More durable, won't mark as easily, won't be destroyed by contact with water, and feels better to shuffle. That being said, you can find more than satisfactory plastics at $5 and under per deck, and if you're playing once a week they should last a long time. All my paper cards seem to pick up nicks/frayed edges and I hate how stiff they are. As the price continues to go up you get heavily diminishing returns, so if you're budget minded I'd stop at the $5 plastics and call it good enough. It's the same reason I'd tell people on a budget to get chips 1 tier above non-denominated dice chips, it's the biggest relative step up in functionality/quality while still being a low enough price that diminishing returns haven't kicked in yet. Sure paper cards and dice chips are plenty usable to play poker, but on a forum for hobbyists people are naturally going to focus on higher quality.
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