Excelsior II

High quality and unique

Beautiful deck of high quality cards. Always nice to have a deck this stunning when everyone else’s cards have one of 3 designs.

Wrong blue

I thought I’d make my peace with the skull that the J Clubs is holding, but no. A bigger problem is that although the dark blue that is used for details on the court cards appears to work in the studio photos displayed on this deck’s webpage, it fails IRL: it’s a blue-black that’s so deep that the black overprinted linework disappears, rendering objects like the QC’s book and other royals’ clothing details as dull and distracting abstract shapes. Unfortunate presswork, perhaps. I regret not having bought Excelsior 1 instead, but then there’s that skull.

Beautiful Ornate Design, but ...

I love the design of this series of cards. Jackson’s creativity seems endless. The only drawback is the sharp edges of these cards requires a very long break-in period before being able to do a faro shuffle. I haven’t figured out how to shorten the break-in period, but the card are beautiful nonetheless.