USPCC Astra

[flashcards]

I came upon this deck at a local Rite Aid pharmacy the other day. The store had these red decks with standard faces and a blue deck with jumbo indices. On the bottom of the deck, it says copyright 2014 by United States Playing Card Company of Erlanger, KY. Then, underneath that, it says, "Made in China". I wasn't aware that USPCC had factories in China. I haven't been able to find any info online about these. I plan to add this one to P52 so if anyone can supply any further information, it would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[rjtomlinson1977]

I came across these also about a year ago. They are terrible quality. I'm not sure if they're really produced by USPCC or not. I was talking to a higher-up at USPCC awhile back about cheap souviner decks found at Disney theme parks. The way he made it sound was that USPCC subcontracts some work to China to save on costs. For example, with Disney you need to pay huge licensing fees to use their artwork... so to offset those prices they get the cards printed in China.
For this deck, I personally think it's a knock off because the quality was so poor the box even came unglued as soon as the cellophane was off.
But speaking of souvenir decks... soon I hope to produce 50 Bicycle branded decks to represent all 50 states. It should be a very exciting project.

[Gareth]

USPCC used to make 'Trump' branded playing cards in China. The brand was originally part of the 'Hoyle' company which USPCC purchased in the late 80's. They seemed to make these really cheap decks (in China) to compete with some of the other cheap decks around.

The Trump decks were really bad - probably on par with the average souvenir deck. Here's a review of them from 2009. The box wasn't particularly strong on the Trump deck I opened, so I wouldn't necessarily rule out them making a cheap deck in a cheap tuck.

Guessing that Astra might have been another attempt at selling cheap decks - although, Jumbo Indexes?

[Michelle]

I have these- I've only ever found them in Rite Aid. The design was simple but not too bad so I added them to my collection.

[flashcards]

Thanks for the info, guys. I've added them the standard deck to P52 with just the basic info. I kind of like the design, but based on the comments about the quality, I probably won't bother opening them.