A Deck a' Cards: $?

[Garbanzo]

I think I remember a post talking about the price to print a custom deck of cards.  I even think I remember points like, "Depends on the number of cards in the deck."  But I'm not having any luck searching the fora.

I've found printers like Gemaco Playing Card Company, but they put your logo etc. on the obverse, standard suits and all that on the reverse.  


So, I'd like a custom deck of 72 cards, double-sided.  Quality is a secondary (or tertiary) concern; cf. Cheapass Games.  I'm thinking at this point a print run of 1-50.

Does anyone have a sense of what this would cost?

Thanks,
-Matt

[greyorm]

This has come up a number of times on the NoDice mailing list. The short answer is: depends on how many decks you'll want to print.

The longer answer is, well, longer.

A professional card-printing place will charge you likely well more than you can afford because you'll doubtlessly be printing in quantities well below what they usually print. The reason it is so expensive is because of the time it takes to set up a printer to run that series of cards; the investment has to be worth the cost.

A cheaper alternative is to dish out money at your local Kinko's or similar. If you can do 9 cards on a sheet, you can print them (in color, one side) for around $5 per sheet; sheet reprints might only run you 34 cents each, however, depending on where you go. Prices may vary in your area, so look around first and ask as some places will charge you ridiculous amounts for nothing (ie: two black and white pages of text for $8).

Also, you can often drop prices by digitizing the material -- that means creating it at adequate resolutions in Quark or Pagemaker (or similar) and providing a CD or Zip/Jaz disk with the sheets on it, ready for printing.

This comes out to $114 for a print run of 50. 8 sheets of 9 cards, double-sided = $80, plus 50 reprints of each sheet = $34 (assuming you can get sheet reprints at the price above). If you want them laminated as well, it will cost more.

Anyone with more exact information, or who has actually printed out a number of sets, should definitely chime in.

[Chris Passeno]

Matt,
Greyorm is correct.  There is a minimum.

There are 2 primary companies in the United States that print Playing Cards.   Gemaco and U.S. Playing Card Company.  The minimum decks for USPC is 10,000.  You are mistaken about Gemaco though, they will do custom front and back cards.  If I remember correctly, the minimum is 2500 decks and the price isn't too bad.  If you are a member of ASI (Ad Specialties Inc.) you would get a decent vendor discount.

If you've got the quantity (10,000) it would be better to go through Printmasters in India.  I believe that they did FRAG from SJ Games.  They are much cheaper than USPC even with freight.

There is another company in Texas, but the name escapes me.  There is also Quebecor in Canada, whose prices are pretty good.

Hope this helps.

[clehrich]

If you're really thinking about tiny runs like 50, I'd recommend that you go with the double-sided color printing at Kinko's.  The question, to my mind, is what you'll use the cards for.  When I ran a version of Shadows in the Fog, I made up a set of special Tarot cards, and a friend from RISD set them up like real cards -- except that they are laminated, not regular cards.  This means that you can't shuffle them with an ordinary riffle, because (1) they stick together slightly, and (2) if you bend back and forth repeatedly the lamination will start to come undone.  Of course, you can overhand shuffle, but not everyone knows how to do this smoothly.  If you don't laminate at all, almost any shuffling will quickly crush and bend the corners and/or bellies of the cards.

So consider whether you need cards in that restricted sense, or whether you really just need things that look like cards.  If you need real cards, you're going to have to deal with someone who actually makes cards, and that's going to take big runs (as mentioned before).

[ethan_greer]

A cheap alternative that I have used successfully is getting the cards printed at kinkos (one sided, 9 cards per sheet) on card stock, cut them out, and feed them into Ultra-Pro opaque-backed card sleeves (typically used for trading card games).  This makes a deck that is shuffleable, durable, and fairly cheap.

Of course, this is only good for very small numbers of decks, since producing them is kind of a pain.  But it's great for rigorous playtesting.  A deck of these suckers has survived several days of vigorous play and/or abuse (we're talking smoke-filled rooms, beverage spills, and getting thrown around and manhandled) and is none the worse for wear.

[ThreeGee]

Hey Matt,

If money is worth more to you than time, you can also make the cards yourself. Buying pre-perforated card stock or using your handy-dandy paper cutter with plain card stock would be quite a bit cheaper than paying Kinko's prices. However, you need a printer that is up to the task and the time to run the job by hand.

Later,
Grant

[Garbanzo]

Thanks, folks.

The siren song of index cards was growing so loud (Riiiite-Aiiiid, seventy-nine ceennnnnnntssss...) I couldn't think.

I'll head over to Kinko's and check out the options.

-Matt

[Andy Kitkowski]

Other options:

1. Business Cards. They're sturdy, can be in color and double-sided, and there are about a jillion places that will print these for you, all looking to be your Lowest Bidder.  Sure, though, the size will be smaller than you may be looking for.

In Japan, though, small is cute!  (or something)

2. Stickers! Find someone willing to sell pre-cut sticker sheets where each sticker/seal is a little smaller than the size of the card. Get someone to print on those. Then, assemble your deck yourself: Pop out the seals, stick them on the faces on your sturdy set of regular playing cards.  If you do it in bulk, it shouldn't cost too-too much.

-Andy

[Mike Holmes]

1. Business Cards.

That's brilliant. They won't want to do "decks" per se, but they would do a run of 50 of card one, 50 of card two, etc. Then all you have to do is coallate to get decks.

Mike

[Walt Freitag]

1. Business Cards.

That's brilliant. They won't want to do "decks" per se, but they would do a run of 50 of card one, 50 of card two, etc. Then all you have to do is coallate to get decks.

I've had many many different business-card-sized cards printed for various LARP events. In my experience, printers will charge nearly as much for 50 of a card as for 500 (the standard box-of-business-cards size), if they're willing to do shorter runs at all.

You might be able to get a printer to run a mixed batch of cards if you provide camera-ready sheets with the proper (find out from the printer what is proper) layout of ten card images at a time. They could run 50 cardstock sheets through, and do the normal cutting, leaving you with 500 cards of 10 different kinds. (For normal jobs they run 500 sheets laid out with cards for 10 different customers, and separate them into 10 different boxes. It's about the same amount of work to do 50 for one customer, which is why they're usually not willing to do smaller batches. But if you take up the whole layout, it makes it a bit more feasible for them.)

- Walt

One other thing: for prototyping and play-testing, you can buy decks of blank-faced cards (usually Bicycle backs) from magicians' suppliers. You can draw on them with permanent markers. (I'd be wary of trying to print on the face with an ink jet or laser printer, due to the coating.) But this doesn't solve the problem of how to publish them.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, as I checked up on the idea that all dawned on me, too. So, if you need 5000 decks, it might be a viable option. But not so much for 50 (though I'd like to try Walt's idea sometime).

Reminds me of all the problems they had getting M:TG cards printed early on.

Mike

[Walt Freitag]

It's very viable for runs of 500, that being standard for business cards; it's a big easy order for the printer so you should get a big discount. If a deck is about 40 cards, you should be able to end up well under $2 per deck, maybe close to $1 if you're lucky.

You still have to hand collate them; that'll take two to three man-days if you do it efficiently. (Incorrect: lay out the 40 stacks of cards and go down the line picking up one card from each, 500 times. Correct: make 50 card piles and deal each type of card onto all the piles; repeat nine more times. That'll take less than half as much time as the first method. Don't try to do it with 500 piles at once, though, because then if you make any mistakes you're fucked.)

- Walt, flashing back to Spaceport Adeline, a LARP for which about just about that number of business cards -- about 20,000 -- were printed

[anonymouse]

Thought I'd chime in here with an alternative suggestion..

Has any consideration been giving to putting out your custom cards as a PDF? Each page (depending on the size) could hold anywhere from six to nine cards. You have the person simply print them out on a sheet of stiff paper, maybe at Kinko's. Cut out the cards, and voila.

[Mike Holmes]

The viral approach. Very good, Michael. I think I like that best. Certainly keeps the cost down for the buyer.

Mike