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In managing a production process, choosing a proper card-based control mechanism is an important task to achieve the best performance. We present performance evaluation of the three well-known card-based production control mechanisms, KANBAN, CONWIP and Base-stock in serial production lines. We employ the theory of token transaction systems within a deterministic framework. The performance measures are system throughput and work-in-process (WIP). We compare the minimum WIP, when the system attains maximum possible throughput. Our analytical results show that CONWIP outperforms KANBAN, when the total number of cards in CONWIP is less than that in KANBAN. However, in performance evaluation of these two mechanisms with Base-stock, determining the superior system depends on a configuration of system parameters, such as processing times and number of cards employed in the system