Tale of Genji - 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle by Piatnik

Piatnik, once one of the top-three puzzle manufacturers in the world, has sadly been transferring production out of Vienna and into Poland (where this puzzle was made) and the Netherlands. The quality of this puzzle is so vastly inferior to that of Piatnik's older, Austrian-made puzzles that the two might just as well be different brands. Piatnik's Austrian puzzles had the look and feel of paintings, with thick, lavishly inked surfaces that felt almost like oil paints on canvas; in this puzzle, however, there is absolutely no surface treatment to speak of, such that the pieces feel like unfinished cardboard, and the colors appear washed out. What's more, the pieces have a cheap cut to them that causes them to curl like a C when connected in a straight line; the fit feels somewhere between Springbok and Eurographics, which I understand makes no sense at all, but you'd get a sense of what I mean if you started to assemble the pieces. What is perhaps most incredible is that the quality of this puzzle is a significant step down from Piatnik's puzzles from the Netherlands, which suffer from sticky/waxy surfaces and sharp cuts, and are in turn a major step down from the Austrian puzzles. I would gladly pay $5-10 more for a high-quality Piatnik puzzle made in Austria than for this awful garage-sale quality puzzle that bears nothing of Piatnik heritage.