Piatnik Card shuffler

About Piatnik

Piatnik is the oldest name on this site by a very long way. The Viennese firm was founded in 1824 by card maker Anton Moser; Ferdinand Piatnik, a Hungarian-born colleague, took it over in 1843, and his three sons joined in 1882 — which is where the "& Söhne" comes from. The company added board games in 1956 and remains the market leader for playing cards and games in Austria.

Two centuries of making cards is relevant to buying a shuffler, because Piatnik designs its machine around the decks it also manufactures. The automatic model takes standard-sized cards, handles up to two decks, runs on batteries and is compact enough to store easily. It costs about $71 — roughly double the mainstream automatic models we cover, and a long way below professional equipment.

You are paying for the name and for the build, and we would not pretend otherwise. The machine is not faster than a NAVAZIP at less than half the price, and it is noticeably noisier — our own testing notes moderate noise, and buyers say the same. That is its one real weakness.

We rate it 4.5/5 on build quality and 4/5 on performance, ergonomics and price. It suits the player who wants a shuffler from a card company rather than an electronics supplier, and who will keep it for a decade.