What happens in
Vegas stays in Vegas. Fortunately these cards didn't stay in Vegas.
They have cards from many different casinos for sale but I chose Bally's
Las Vegas because I liked the blue color. Casinos have to change
cards frequently, both for appearance and to keep unscupulous players
from marking the cards for cheating. Casinos change cards every few
hours and generate many thousands of decks of discarded cards. Now,
if you're like me, you're wondering “how does this work?”
The casinos have to
shuffle the cards to use them, but when they're resold they're all
put back in order. Is there some kind of machine that uses optical
character recognition to sort and package the cards? Humans could
certainly do it but it would be really labor intensive and costly.
The answer: it's done by prison inmates in Nevada's correctional
institutions, for sub-minimum wage. Amazing.
These are Aristocrat™ cards made by the US Playing Card Company, the same company that
makes Bicycle™, Hoyle™, Bee™ and other fine brands. At only a dollar these
are a great deal, a deck of Bicycle cards (again made by the same
company) costs $2 and is of no better quality. Though technically
used, these cards look, feel, and even smell brand new.
You don't get joker
cards, though, because the casinos don't use those. The cards also
have the corners trimmed so they can't be reused in the casino but
this doesn't affect playability at all.
For a friendly game of poker or blackjack these can't be beat. If you don't have any friends, you can also use these to play solitaire.
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