The cards I will be reviewing are Poker (wide) sized cards from Royal. Royal Plastic Playing Cards may be a new name to many people. Many players recognize the names of some or most of the major plastic card manufacturers (KEM, Dal Negro, Copag, Gemaco, etc.), but few may recognize the Royal name. The cards are manufactured in Taiwan, but that is about all the information concerning the manufacturing of these cards I thought I could find from the cards themselves or their packaging. I was interested in finding more information about the manufacturer so I searched around, but came up empty. I then went to open another deck and noticed that the tiny plastic strip used for opening the packaging said “Kuo Kau Original Royal Made In Taiwan” on it. Kuo Kau, established in 1979, makes cards under the Royal and Queen brand names. I have also seen cards with the name Sunny Pro and Royal Pro which have the exact same packaging with the Kuo Kau trademark. You can visit their website above for more info. But this isn’t all that important since what we are concerned about is the cards and their playability, look, feel etc... so on to the review.
$3.68 to $10 per 2 deck setup. I have seen other places on the web charging more than $10 per 2 decks, but I would discourage anyone from paying that much. At the time of this review the lowest price I found was through Amazon.com sellers (see link above); one named “pokerlord” the other “phatpoker”. The price for a 2 deck setup was $3.68 and $3.69 respectively, plus $4.99 shipping. Shipping rate is in accordance with Amazon.com rates since the cards are listed under Sport & Outdoors category. The 4 decks I own were purchased through the eBay seller listed above (itscheaponline). The price I paid for the 4 decks was $10 plus $5 shipping. I must mention the seller offers combined shipping for any additional cards purchased and I did purchase 2 decks each of KEM, Dal Negro, and Gemaco at the same time. My total shipping cost was $5 for all 10 decks.
Slick and slippery are the first words that come to mind when handling the Royal cards. If you have played with Gemaco plastic cards then you may have an idea of what slick cards feel like. Well the Royal cards are even more slippery than the Gemaco cards and have less texture; in fact the texture is almost non-existent. They have a fairly thin feel to them compared to other plastic playing cards and paper cards. When stacked next to other plastic cards (KEM, Copag, Dal Negro, Gemaco) and paper cards (Bee, Bicycle, Gemaco) they were the shortest. To match up the height of 52 Royal cards I removed the following # of cards from the listed decks: KEM Arrow (bridge size)- 11 cards Gemaco Star (poker size) – 9 cards Dal Negro Freedom (poker size) – 7 cards Bicycle plastic coated (poker size) – 6 cards
These are slippery cards, and shuffling them will prove challenging for the inexperienced. They are extremely flexible, too flexible for my tastes. I do have to say that they are pretty quiet when shuffled. But to me, that is not very important, and generally isn’t a reason to purchase one deck over another, unless of course you are having a clandestine game for one reason or another.
The faces of these cards are the whitest I have seen. The colors are also very deep, making for excellent contrast. There were a couple of cards with some imperfections in the ink (see pic of the 9 of Spades below). The font and face cards are nearly identical to the U.S Playing Cards decks I have; Bicycle, Tally-Ho and Bee. The picture of the Kings below shows Royal cards on top and Tally-Ho on the bottom. I say nearly, because there are some slight design changes and coloration differences on certain face cards and the suits are smaller on the Royal cards as compared to the U.S. Playing Card decks. I have to assume there is some licensing agreement between the two companies.
Since most cards are readily available from retail locations, online or traditional, it is always difficult to prevent outside cards from being introduced without the use of a custom, rare or out of circulation deck. The red on the face of the diamond and heart suited cards is not security ink (the darker red ink that makes it harder for other players to determine if the color is black or red from a distance), but it is darker than most other decks I have used.
In normal play these seem to wear well, maybe a little faster than some other plastic cards (color fading slightly), but then again they can be replaced for a fraction of the price of other plastic cards. I did test the joker card by throwing it against a wooden door. On the 3rd throw, a piece of one corner broke off (see photo below). If you get sucked out and decide to wing one, don’t be surprised if you end up with a “marked” deck.
When all is said and done, I would say these are a decent deal for an inexpensive plastic card. They will definitely outlast a paper deck, that is as long as you don’t test their mettle against a wooden door. If you put a lot of mileage on your decks but don’t want to buy new paper decks every other tourney/game night, than you might want to give these a shot. That being said, these cards pale in comparison to other plastic cards such as KEM, Dal Negro, Copag. These “bigger” name plastic cards are in another league when it comes to feel and playability (they have a reputation for a reason). Personally I would spend the extra money and buy one of the following brands; in my order of preference Dal Negro, KEM (very close 2nd and occasionally moves into 1st), or Copag.
New Deck Plastic Case - Cardboard Slipcover Removed Back Design Ace of Spades Design Kings - Royal Plastic Cards top row, Tally-Ho Cards bottom row Queen of Hearts Design 10 of Diamonds Imperfections in 9 of Spades 7 of Clubs Joker with broken corner after 3 throws against a wooden door Sunny Pro - Also Manufactured by Kuo Kau
