KEM Cards
KEM is the company that stands on top of the plastic playing card field. They are now a part of the United States Playing Card company, and you can visit their website at U.S. PlayingCard.com. Oddly, I failed to find any mention of plastic cards on their site, and the KEM site listed in corporate web directories is "currently being upgraded".
The KEM cards are made of a unique plastic, cellulose acetate, not the pvc that other companies use to make cards. This gives them a unique feel.
The decks I picked up were poker sized (2 1/2" x 3 1/2"), Arrow series cards. The backs, which are beautiful by the way, are blue and red.
Each deck had 56 cards. They contained the traditional 52 cards, 2 jokers, a company information card and a poker hand rankings card.
The Ace of Spades, which I've learned displays the production date of the deck, says my deck was made on 0206, or February of 2006. The card also displays "Kem Playing Cards" and "Made in U.S.A. by The U.S. Playing Card Co." so the company must be back to manufacturing Kem cards, in poker size.
Kem Arrows New In Box
I picked up a set of standard index cards. I wish I would have had the choice of jumbo or "super" index cards. I'm not sure if it was the retailer I cought through that didn't carry them, or if the company is simply not making poker sized cards with that face size at this time.
The decks come in the same plastic housing that Copag cards come in. Except, the lid on the Kem housing does not fit snugly. There's good and bad in everything. While there is no need to pry open a box of Kems, if the box happens to fall, it will easily open and you'll be on your hands and knees hunting down playing cards unless you've rubber-banded the decks inside their plastic housing.
Standard Index - Red - Ace of Spades - Black - Blue Backs
The cards look and feel fantastic. They don't have that same texture that the Dal Negros had to make them feel like a paper card. But, they do have the same consistency.
It's not so much that the Kems bend easily, they aren't difficult to bend, it's that they snap back. They don't crease or mark the way a paper card would, although while you're bending them they have the same give that a paper card does.
They slide and shuffle nicely, but they are so slick that you lose control of the deck easily. When sliding cards across our plastic tables, the cards slid smoothly, but eventually stopped on their own. Not every single card needed to be caught.
A deck of Kems is stable. They will not spontaneously fall over because the cards are super-slick.
I've measured a deck of 52 cards at .6214 inches, which makes them as thick as Copags, but with a completely different feel. There's no "flimsiness" in the Kems. They come in slightly thinner than the Dal Negros.
Overall, the Kems are far and away my favorites of the plastic cards I've tried. The backs are beautiful, the faces are standard fare. Nothing artistic or special about them to be honest. But it's the material of the cards that really makes them shine.
They manage to be flexible without being "too bendy". They are slick without being "slippery". They shuffle easily, slide well, snap back into place after being bent, stand up to soda spills and other player abuse. In short, I think they embody all of the advantages of plastic cards without the disadvantages.
The Kems will be the first deck of cards I reach for when dealing a Holdem game.
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