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Ok, so I know what plasticard is and where to find it. However, I have a ton of plastic cards (like credit/debit cards, but no embossed numbers or letters...they're all flat). Would this work as a good substitute for plasticard?

yes and no, while you could use them for some projects, others require much thinner materials. stick with plasticard in my opinion

In general, those are a fairly poor substitute. Hit up your local home depot/lowes/walmart/etc for signage, and you'll never look back.

For sale signs, and many other varieties, are sold at those locations, and you'll notice they're made of.. plasticard. They're several square feet for 3 dollars ish, and usually come in a couple thicknesses.

Ok, thanks for the replies. I appreciate the info.

I dont see why not, its plastic right? As a suggestion though, I would paint it before assuming its actually flat. You would be surprised just how fine the printing/embossing on a card can be, what appears flat could in fact be covered in slightly embossed text, etc.

Those cards are made of the same stuff around here.

I've used quite a few over the years. You DO have to sand them back to get the shiny off them and to get the glue to bond properly, though.

For old cards with embossing, some baking paper and an iron tends to work for flattening them out again.

For sale signs in oz tend to be made from corrugated plastic board (like cardboard, but plastic, and it's a pvc plastic).

Silly Oz, we're just lucky in the US I suppose!

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100144935/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

You can search "sign" on home depot and sort by price (low to high) to find them to get an idea, but since they have many different things to say/advertise, theres also many different sizes, shapes, and thicknesses.

The only other thing to keep in mind goes to what chromedog said, these signs can be one sided or double sided, you want the one sided, which will have a blank side which you can face outward and not worry about painting on. The lettering on them, although it seems to be flat, is noticeable once painted over.

chaos0xomega wrote:I dont see why not, its plastic right? As a suggestion though, I would paint it before assuming its actually flat. You would be surprised just how fine the printing/embossing on a card can be, what appears flat could in fact be covered in slightly embossed text, etc.

Yea, I actually went and checked them out. There's some small embossing on the back (like the security numbers on a credit card...very small, not very deep), but the front is smooth. So I'll just make sure the numbers are on the side that isn't visible if/when I use them.

targetawg wrote:In general, those are a fairly poor substitute. Hit up your local home depot/lowes/walmart/etc for signage, and you'll never look back.

For sale signs, and many other varieties, are sold at those locations, and you'll notice they're made of.. plasticard. They're several square feet for 3 dollars ish, and usually come in a couple thicknesses.

Wooo, good tip.

For a thicker plastic for vehicles and such, I also save old laundry detergent bottles. Just cut out the flat edges and toss the corners in the recycling.

chaos0xomega wrote:I dont see why not, its plastic right? As a suggestion though, I would paint it before assuming its actually flat. You would be surprised just how fine the printing/embossing on a card can be, what appears flat could in fact be covered in slightly embossed text, etc.

actually plastic credit cards are laminated, if you can remove that they would work well.

They aren't ideal but they work just fine. Ive also used playing cards for very thin stuff, plus when your deployed people who send care packages apparently think soldiers either play spades more than we do or use them like cigarettes for currency...like prison.
Signage as noted it a good source of card, so are sign stores. The places that actually make signs for people, you can sometimes get smoking deals on scraps and even whole sheets up to 4'x8' from them...but a gametable size piece of card is a bit much.