This is what irks me most about 'last' gen, is that I wasn't able to use a large card like I was in the PS1 era. I had a dual memory card in the PS1 era(had a button on it you pressed to switch cards) and it worked faithfully through 10+ years.
So, not ALL third party cards are junk, though I tried one of the 64 mb max memory cards when I got my first PS2 and it never wanted to work right, it kept asking me to reformat every time I went to save.
Of course, it wasn't from Interact, which is the ONLY third party company I trusted for cards/controllers. I still have a third party controller from them that works like the day I bought it without fail.