plastic cards & other fancy stuff

Would they need to be plastic/laminated because of counters being placed and removed from them?

I personally know of three games with plastic cards: The Agents, Gloom, and The Builders: Antiquity.
-Agents was a kickstarter that unlocked a stretch goal for plastic cards. I actually have it. They feel like normally thick cards (0.016" by my measurement) with a matte dithered finish (as opposed to linen) and they don't feel "icky" like a glossier card might. They have four tiny marks/bumps on the sides where they were punched from a sheet. I assume they're durable, but we only ever played it once.
-Gloom and The Builders: Antiquity use mostly transparent plastic cards as a way to modify/replace information on cards underneath.

Moral of the story: It can be done.

Personally IF it is a SMALL, Filler-Type game - with at most 18 cards, I say GO FOR PLASTIC CARDS! :)

If it's a larger deck 40+ cards, I say stick to card stock.

As far as COST goes, I priced it and I have found plastic cards at $0.175 a card. Now The Game Crafter (TGC) charges $0.09 a poker card. It's almost double as said.

But still in LOW volume - this would be an EXCELLENT option!

Just my 2 cents.

Update: Don't forget that plastic sleeves cost $1.99 for 100 sleeves. But if you have a smaller game and don't want to worry about plastic sleeves - plastic cards might be a valid alternative!

I was really looking into this - because I wanted to design a filler-type game that would use plastic cards. Unfortunately the game that I was working on just "sucked" and I did not find any other ideas that could be used (for plastic cards).