I bought the third edition and compared the cards side by side. I think the new version is better! I find all the art in the 22 new cards improved - richer, more original and still specific in illustrating the traditional meaning of the cards. There was maybe 1, possibly 2 cards at most where I was torn for a minute over the new art. A lot of the new cards incorporate mixed ethnicity and add some more color but I like how they mix in. And I'm perfectly happy not to see all white mermaids with the same big gratuitous boobs. I barely see a negigible difference between what people are calling this new "sepia" tone, and the old. It's most prominent on The Fool - the 2nd edition Fool was slightly whiter, but it seems she's evened out the tone over the whole deck, which works nicely.
Whoever says that some of the old cards are "blurrier" in this new edition doesn't have the 2nd to compare it to - they were like that then. It never bothered me, as it evokes photos of tattoo art - and while I was never bothered by the borders being uneven in the old edition - perhaps it's because they're hand drawn - I'm perfectly happy she's evened them out. The titles, numbers, and signatures on the cards are also hand drawn, in different places, within the artwork - she put them where she wanted to aesthetically, and I appreciate that. In fact, I far prefer it to the uniform borders and computer font titles the big publishing companies use. And what's really nice, is that if you have both editions and you prefer some cards to others, you can mix from each deck - the backs on both editions are the same.
I have many many Tarot decks, but Rider Waite Smith is my go-to, and in my opinion this deck is one of the best clones ever for the combination of beauty AND USE. I think $38 is really a fair price. And I take no issue with Darcy having redrawn some images from the LoScarabeo deck in her past editions, probably for the same reason LoS had no problem. This is technically NOT copyright infringement - because she redrew them by hand and changed them. I imagine she had a LoS deck and thought "yuck, I could do better than this" and that may be how this deck came about. And those same LoS images are mostly just reinterpretations of the Rider Waite using mermaids in their usual style.
I have all 3 editions of this deck, and I'm now happily moving from using the 2nd edition to the third, and I if I pick up a "back-up," it will be 3rd edition - that's how happy I am with it. If you want to see the 2 decks side by side, just watch the youtube video, but be aware that the difference in lightness or brightness of overall tone in the two decks is probably due to poor lighting. I think she must have a lamp on the left side because I looked at mine in broad daylight and there's no difference, for instance, between those 2 Emperor cards. Or perhaps there were several printings of the 2nd edition and hers is lighter than mine? Anyway, for whatever reasons, Dame Darcy decided to redraw the cards she wasn't happy with for this edition, and I think it's an improvement.