talkmagic.co.uk

Seeing the extensive size of the pre-exisiting stripper deck thread, and the brilliant advice from Tomo on purchasing a USPCC Sealed deck, I went ahead and bought one. I hope this can warrant a stand alone thread, considering the numerous different threads on different decks.

USPCC Sealed Stripper Deck
Available from http://www.cards4magic.co.uk/

Price: £6-£12 depending upon where you buy

Catagory: Card Deck
Difficulty: 1 out of 5

They say:

These really are the last word in Stripper Decks, only recently produced for magicians by the U.S. Playing Card Company. They look and handle perfectly, yet at any time you can have the secret weapon of a tapered deck.

I say:

I'm pretty sure everyone is familiar with the normal concept of the stripper deck, so I shall try and highlight the major differences between this deck with the others available on the market.

The major difference is the extent of the taper. With the "third party" type modified decks, bought anywhere and everywhere, the taper sticks out like a sore thumb and for the eagle eye can even be spotted when stacked normally, making the cards and thus the deck look deformed. Furthermore some of the stripper decks I have bought have an even more noticable "shaved/flattened" corner of one of the cards, very obvious to me-but perhaps not so to the audience. Either way I digress. The USPCC deck suffers from none of these shortcomings. The taper is ever so slight, invisible when viewed as a normal stacked deck and the cards don't have any tells that these are in fact a stripper deck. The use of the cards is as normal handling, and even with the taper being so slight-it makes entirely no difference as it is more than sufficient to "get a grips with".

Being sealed, the cards feel and handle like newly opened normal Bike cards, including the now standard Sudoku cards, advert and jokers. I hasten to add that the whole deck is tapered, including these cards-strange and new effects perhaps using the Sudoku card? They arrive in a normal shrinkwrap pack with a stripper deck sticker attached to the wrap. Only concern is the difficulty of removing the sticker without leaving any trace of it, assuming that some may want to use the deck in a performance as an unopened normal deck.


The deck itself is indeed sealed, although with a white ace seal as opposed to the standard blue/red seal. Being new to magic, all the Bike decks I have ever bought have a red/blue seal depending upon the deck colour (normal/Tiger's etc), and so this did strike me as odd. I'm sure laymen wouldn't notice, but I certainly did. If it is a real problem, one could always just swap cases...
Similarly the "lip" of the flap that inserts into the card case seems a lot larger (going deeper into the case) than the other bike decks I have bought and seen, almost giant in comparrison. Again this may just be a new feature of all cases, or some other strange way of indicating that the cards are tapered. It makes no real difference, and as stated, one could always change the case!


Overall:
The stripper deck has been discussed to death, and the new addition of these USPCC cards could see a new uprising in the already popular idea. Due to the subtle taper I have even allowed others to shuffle (more testing needed) post loading of the card, and they remain none the wiser. This will depend of course upon how adept the shuffler is with cards. These are the best and only stripper deck that I shall ever purchase from now on, being of top quality and very well priced, costing a few pounds more than a standard stripper. Thoroughly recommended!

Rating out of 10: 9/10

NB Do excuse the quality of this review, it is my first and so much practice is needed! Anything needed to be changed shall be done!

good review..

I have recently acquired the normal bike backed stripper and that provided by the USPCC.

I have to agree, the taper is so discreet it certainly takes a LOT of heat off the deck. It handles very well as well, like a new deck of bikes.. something that the normal deck seems to struggle with. Well, what I mean is that the standard stripper deck seems broken in, and cards almost stick together it seems, whereas this new deck is like, well, IS a brand new deck. Cut perfectly, handles perfectly, that have my vote anyway.

Well I don't know what its like in Nottingham and London but in Wakefield everyone in the pubs know of the tapered and long and short decks having had them themselves or seen their mates with them. On sale in the pound shops occasionally and certainly on the market nearly every week. When I hand a deck out they are the first things they check for.

Wouldn't touch one if it was encrusted in diamonds. A genuine deck of Waddingtons handed out for examination is the way to go, everyone round here grew up with, and recognises them.

If you have to use fake decks ...
1. Learn to use a real deck first.
2. Don't use a fake deck kids know.
3. Use a fake deck that lets you go back to a real deck without suspicion.

In some ways, I'd agree with you on this Tenko; the stripper deck is well-known amongst lay-people, but generally only for a single effect.

I highly recommend you check out, "Strip with Jon Thomson", which deals very nicely with all of the objections you've raised in your post (and plenty more).

I'd also suggest that, if your audience is checking out your cards, when they're supposed to be shuffling/cutting/choosing etc., there is a distinct spectator-management issue that needs to be worked on

the long flap used to be used in every deck. I know this because when I was really starting into magic, I saw that I had an old bike deck box, and it had the long flap, and it said copyright 1998 or something, so that would explain it.[/code]