Some cards are more durable than others. Cards with gilded edges or silver and gold inks such as the Tarot of the Old Path or Russian Tarot of St. Petersberg will show wear on their metallic paints after your first hundred readings or so.

Cards with pictures that go out to the edges of the card with no white border such as the Morgan-Greer Tarot will show wear on the edges more quickly than those with a white border. Those crisp straight edges of your cards will become soft and frayed. All these things are normal and show a well-loved deck of cards however, it is important to avoid creasing or tearing the cards.

When shuffling, don’t bend them so hard that they are folded, and demand that others handle your cards with care. If a card becomes creased, you will find your eye following its progress through the deck as you shuffle, this pretty much ruins the idea of a random shuffle. So here are the rest of the warnings they forgot to include with your deck. Some of these are supposed to be fun and are insights gained through silly personal experiences.

• Avoid lengthy exposure of the cards to the sun. Cards are generally not printed with UV stabilized ink or coatings and the overexposure to the sun will severely fade them.  Leaving them on the dash of your car for a single day will usually ruin them.  If they become sticky and hard to shuffle, you can use a barely-wet, well wrung-out soft cloth or microfiber cloth on plastic-coated cards to wipe off the grime.
  On a funny side-note, I once tried to use a vinyl polish used for cars (Armor-All) to clean my cards and protect them from UV, only to discover that it worked well but made my cards super slippery!  It also caused them to yellow very quickly, within a couple of months, and they became brittle after a year or two.  Although it was a learning experience, I do not recommend this technique!
• Read your cards on a clean level surface. That sticky syrup left from breakfast at the local restaurant table should be cleaned off. Doing layouts on inclined surfaces is difficult as the cards tend to slide into a heap at the bottom.
• Do not use your cards in or near water.
• Do not leave your cards where they may be damaged or walked on.
• Do not spill liquids onto your cards.
• Do not expose your cards to rain, snow, or hail.
• Do not place your cards in the toaster, microwave or heating unit of any kind, no matter how wet they are.
• Do not write on your cards, you’ll later regret it.
• Do not expose your cards to open flames.