 Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy. My name is David and this is a top five. All right, so this is going to be my top five favorite decks and where to buy decks. You know, sometimes people ask, hey, where do you get your cards? Where do you get those decks? Let me just tell you, all right? Well, let me just tell you where you can go find cards if you wanna get into card collecting or maybe you are into magic and you want some specialty decks, okay? A first place, the best place to check is just general merchandise stores in your area, okay? A general merchandise store is a general store, okay? A general store like grocery stores, drug stores, Target, Walmart, the like, okay? So if you're going to Target or if you're going to Walmart, places like that, the cards will be in the games section. So over where games are, all right? If you go to a drug store, if you go to a drug store, they're probably gonna be over where toys are. So sometimes drug stores have like one aisle of toys. Sometimes in drug stores, they'll keep the decks of cards upfront where the candy is up by the registers. Sometimes you'll find them up there as well. Another place to check would be a grocery store, okay? You can find like Streamline, you can find some poker cards, B cards, bikes, you can find those at the grocery store too. Those will be over in the stationary aisle. So where you find paper envelopes, paper clips and the like, you'll find those over there. And sometimes the stationary is really close to the toys. So just go and look over there. General merchandise stores are a great place to find cards. When I purchase a brand new deck or a deck, maybe I've never seen or used before, I generally look for cards that are made by bicycle, okay? Made by the United States playing card company or at least made in the USA. I tend to try to avoid decks that say made in China and you can just flip the card case over, look at the tuck case at the bottom and you can be able to see where it was made. So general merchandise stores, great place to buy cards. Another great place to buy cards, the second great place is eBay. eBay is a great place to find cards, especially cards when they sell out, okay? If the designers don't have them anymore, eBay will have them. Also vintage cards, like you were looking for cards from a long time ago, there's a lot of great vintage cards on eBay as well. The great thing about eBay is you can find sellers that are selling multiple decks, okay? So they might be selling decks for multiple designers or multiple years and you can purchase those and then save on shipping. I know one of the complaints about some of the larger designers is their shipping prices. And so an eBay seller will probably give you a more true, more reasonable shipping price and you can use the eBay in your area. So you can use the European eBay if you want or the Asian one and I think you'll find that the shipping will be a little better for you. The last place to look for a specialty decks is of course the web. The web is gonna have most of the designers, most of the graphic artists out there that are selling these specialty decks and that would be places like Dan and Dave, Illusionist, Theory 11, the Blue Crown, Legends, the Conjuring Arts Research Center, David Blaine and Penguin Magic. Those are all great places to start, all great places to find custom cards and another way to find out if any of these companies are releasing anything new is to follow them on social media. So follow these companies, follow these designers on social media, follow them on their Facebook page, follow them on their Instagram page, you'll be able to see which new decks are coming out and see which decks are being talked about. Lastly, I would suggest that you keep periodically checking on Kickstarter. I would go back to Kickstarter once every two or three weeks just to see which new decks are coming out there. Kickstarter's another great place to find custom printed specialty decks. All right, so that is where to find cards. Now to go on to my top five favorite decks. These are my top five favorite decks and I should preface this by saying these are my top favorite decks right now, obviously, because our top fives, our top 10s, they change all the time. So, but these have been probably my top five for a very long time. All right, so let's get into it. All right, so here we go. My top five favorite decks of the, wait a minute, this isn't, no, no, no, no, start over. All right, that was a little bit of a joke. Maybe you might know what that joke was relating to. Maybe you won't. But again, these are my top five decks in no particular order. First we have the Origins, first edition by Rick Davidson. These came out a while back and I have to say, Rick Davidson was really onto something when he put this out. This was kind of like the premier deck of what a deck would look like if it was on matte black paper, wrapped in gold foil, a really beautiful tech case, ornamental, totally original court cards, beautiful court cards, beautiful queens, in fact. A really cool, very creative cigar band back design. Original jokers, just overall, the whole deck was just really well thought out. I really love the Origins deck. Rick Davidson is a great designer. Second, I've got the Magicon playing cards from 2014. Now this was an Dan and Dave slash Art of Play release. Obviously these were the complimentary deck that were given out to people who went to Magicon in 2014. Now I didn't go, obviously, but I waited until Art of Play had these on their website and tell them I went for a sale and they're sold out pretty much now. I think I really love about this. It's just how simple the deck is, right? But yet, how many little tweaks they could make and still make it really cool. Like I love the white washed back design. I love the star back design, even though it's a one way, I think that's cool too. I love the different colors that they put in with the red outline courts. The blue outlines, how they took away the black coloring. The jokers are original. I just love the star pattern. All in all, I love simple decks and so this is a really great one in my opinion. Next up we have the Split Spades from David Blaine. These Split Spades are the Silver Edition and yes, it does make a difference. The Silver Edition, I think if you ask anyone who's picked up some of these David Blaine decks or has a few of them, they'll tell you the Silver Split Spades are really something special. It's gonna be the same Split Spades back design with the eagles there in the center and the angels in the corners. But the really neat thing about this deck is really the quality of the paper. Just, I don't know what it is. They're just super, super soft. They have a buttery feel. They shuffle fantastically. They feel great. And then you get all the perks and all the bells and whistles of having David Blaine deck. You know, the jokers, the courts, all that. There's so much attention was put into this but more than anything, it's the paper. It's how this stock feels. This deck does not feel like any other deck in my collection. Next up is the Superior Black Edition from Expert Playing Cards. Now, why this one? Well, the back design on this is very familiar. They released the Superior Back Design decks before, okay? So they've had other titles with the same back design and even the same Ace of Spades and jokers. It's that same Zen facing that you've seen. But the tuck case on this was designed by Jackson Robinson. If you follow my channel for any amount of time, you know that I'm a huge Jackson Robinson, Federal 52 Kings Wild fan boy. Like I just love him as a designer and so this tuck case is awesome. Love the silver on this. I also like black back decks. Like more than red and blue, I love black back decks. This tuck case is on that sturdy indestructible paper that you know, you can't get wet or tear. So I love that. When these came out originally, I think a brick was only 40 bucks. So I love that as well. I did buy a brick. I just love this as a good all-around staple deck. Sometimes you just need a deck. You can pull out at any time, not cause any suspicion. And for that, I go to the Superior Black Deck. Lastly is I've got the Whispering Ims Gamesters. Now, again, if you follow my channel for any amount of time, you know that I'm a huge Whispering Ims fan, huge fan of Chris Choco. I love his design work. Ever since the first Whispering Ims came out, I've just been all over these. So these are kind of like the best of the best. So you get this really ornate, beautiful tuck case. It's that throwback ornamentation to like old school magic. And then you have the simple back design. So I love simple back designs. I love solid color backs. I love the little Whispering Ims logo there. And then again, you get those rich quartz. You get the quad corners. You get those vintage looking faces. Beautiful, beautiful jokers. Nesa Space can't go wrong with this deck. All right, so those are my top five decks of cards right now. Maybe some of these were your favorites. Maybe you have a completely different top five. I would love to hear what your top five cards are in the comment section below. Thanks, I'll see you next time. Bye.