Index cards are important tools, particularly if you're going through a thousand or more a month. I tend toward the cheapest ones I can find and am always half tempted to bulk order them in pallet quantity from somewhere to get a steep discount, especially as I've got filing cabinet storage space for another 40,000 4x6 index cards readily at hand.

I looked more closely at the Wexfords I just picked up and they are made in India. Comparatively my Staples branded cards are also made in India, while the Amazon Basics and Oxford cards are made in the United States.

As for line quality, the most consistent I've seen are the Stockroom Cards designed in California, but made in China. Oxford has been generally solid and Amazon lines have been occasionally hit and miss.

About a year ago, the local Amazon Fresh store had dozens of their 500 card packs listed for an overly reasonable $2.50 each (half a penny per card), so I picked up about 15,000 cards at a time when they were usually in the $12-15 range online. They're presently at a near annual best of $7.45 (about 1.5 cents per card). At $3.50 for 100, the Wexfords ran almost twice as expensive at 3.5 cents per card. I suspect tariffs are likely affecting the price of foreign cards more heavily lately.

I've not really tried out any listed as "flashcards", so I can't comment on the prices or quantities there. Some of the ones I have seen tended to the more expensive side, so I've passed on them.

Good luck in your continued search.

I tried out some of the Wexford cards today. They're generally the same exact thickness and general quality as the Amazon Basics and the Oxford branded cards I've got. They're probably closer in quality to Amazon Basics than the Oxford which are a bit "tighter weave". I've got almost a dozen different brands, perhaps one of these days I'll set up my microscope along with a camera and do photos of the differences in paper quality.

The Wexfords have some of the more textured feel of any I've seen out there. They have the standard red top line, but the rest of the lines seem almost grayish or nearly black compared to most other cards which have a medium to lighter blue coloring. The Wexfords also have an only very slightly thinner than usual 1/4" spacing. (It measures out to 0.2375 inches between lines rather than the typical 0.25" most American cards would have. This nets out to be a 6mm line which makes me think it's a more European/Japanese/Chinese card than an American one despite the 4x6" dimensions.)

I've never tried Wexford before either, but often those sorts of products are mass produced in China by one company and just re-labeled for half a dozen different companies, so searching around may find something similar under a different name.

I will say that some of the ones you listed tend to be the cheapest, lower quality cards I've run across. I use the Amazon Basics a lot, but primarily because they had a sale on their bricks of 500 cards a year or two back and I picked up 20 of them for $2.50 each.

Oxford cards are some of the smoother (inexpensive) cards I've tried in the past, but even their paper quality has shifted a bit over the past 15 years.

If you're doing 3x5 cards in blank, Brodart's library catalog cards are of a much higher quality and durability without breaking the bank and they're wonderfully smooth as well. https://www.shopbrodart.com/

Stockroom plus has some great quality, smooth cards, but I've only ever seen them in gridded format and never plain or lined: https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Index-Cards-Inches-White/dp/B08BJ11LWC/

Notsu also has some high quality smooth cards, but I don't think I've seen them in lined format and they can tend toward being very expensive.

If you have the funds and want something incredibly smooth, try the Exacompta Bristol cards made by Clairefontaine. Their manufacturing process is dramatically different and they're incredibly smooth, particularly for fountain pen use. The downside is that they can be almost 3 times more expensive than other brands. They do carry their cards in a wide variety of sizes and formats though.

One of these days I ought to lay out a grid of the more common cards and do some more serious reviews.

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