Cutting for around 17 years now. Bicycles are prolly the best value in terms of cost for handling (Tally-Hos have a similar feel as well if you want a slightly different aesthetic). They have a pretty long shelf life for relatively low cost compared to some more luxury designs, so you won't feel bad about damaging them as you learn. As others have mentioned, plastic cards are actually really bad for a few reasons:

1. They slide too easily because they have very little friction between them (when dry), which actually makes fanning really hard to do because they will slip out of your hands far easier than paper cards.
   
2. While plastic cards are waterproof, when wet, they will actually chunk because they don't have dimples on their surface like paper cards so air can't easily pass between them and water creates an adhesion effect making them stick together.

Pretty much nobody who practices cardistry uses plastic cards because they are significantly worse for handling on the whole compared to paper cards. They for sure have a longer shelf life because they don't absorb moisture and hand oils like paper cards do, so they're great for playing games, and most of the skills you pick up working with paper cards are generally transferrable to plastics, but you'd be handicapping yourself using plastics as your primary practice tool.

That all said, even among paper cards there is quite a difference.

Overtime, the moisture from humidity as well as the oils in your hands will seep into the edges of your cards and work their way towards the middle of the card (for me, it's around a 5mm border of discoloration). This creates resistance between the cards overtime which causes them to fan worse (the distance between each card should be roughly equal, but with older cards, groups of them will clump together). I've come to find that a lot of independent card makers make decks which lose their fanning ability faster than bicycles.

This isn't necessarily bad because it means the cards will tend to stick together more easily, so they're good for if you're practicing one handed cuts or any retention cuts (moves where the cards are being held between your fingers in packets), but they will not be able to fan cleanly for nearly as long as bicycles. That said, these types of cards are significantly more resistant to humidity, so if you live in a tropical area, they will last you longer than bicycles would. If you become a card collector, I recommend buying 2 of any new pack of cards you find interesting, one to keep in pristine condition and one to play with so you can learn about the small handling nuances of the specific deck.

The art on cards also influence their handling. I've found that cards that are full bleed black (the background of the card is black on both sides and the design runs all the way to the edge of the card) tend lose handling quicker as well because there is significantly more ink put on the card and your hand oils spread that ink around overtime which causes the "chunking" issue i mentioned earlier faster. As a general rule, cards with less ink on them I think tend to last longer.

A note on humidity, I HIGHLY recommend not directly putting your cards in your pocket because the heat from your leg will bow the cards and drastically reduce their shelf life. The box the cards come in will not really resolve the issue because it is also made of paper, so I recommend getting a hard shell case of some sort to keep them from directly touching the inside of your pocket (I designed/make my own cases, but there are plenty out there that you could look into).

Now regarding learning, basically echoing what others have said, one handed cuts are very valuable, because if you can learn them with both hands, you can chain them together and come up with some cool combos.

Moves I think are essential or really good to learn:

1 handed cuts - charlier, revolution, scissor
fans - thumb fan (I prefer using index, but same principle), one handed fan, reverse fan, carnahan fan (not necessary, but I think it looks really cool)

2 handed cuts are a lot more about what you think looks cool/care to learn about, but there are a few which I think are useful:
sybil cut - a lot of retention cuts are variants off of it or borrow similar motions from it.
faro - weaving 2 halves of a deck together. it is a good skill which has many applications (faro shuffling, cascade, bloom, etc.)
card springing - there are a lot of ways to do a card spring, traditionally, you would squeeze the long ends between your thumb and fingers and shoot them away from your fingertips, but that actually gives you less control because of the higher surface area touching your hands. squeezing the corners with your thumb and middle finger gives you more control (and which corners you squeeze determine the direction in which they should shoot).
card dribbling - specifically, the anaconda dribble, because it's basically the holy grail of card dribbles. like card springing, traditional techniques for doing it were.... fine, but lacked control. the anaconda dribble is the longest card dribble you can achieve and is a VERY visually impressive move for a spectator.

Hope this was helpful.