looking for card POD

[phetish]

hey folks...

i'm looking for a Print on Demand (POD) company to make cards.  my cards need to be somewhat larger than playing card size, something on the order of 3" by 5".  I did several searches around here, and only came up with one company so far... RapidPOD. 

those posts were about 6 months old, so i was going to check if anyone knew of any new POD's doing cards.

anyone?

derek

[btrc]

I guess the next question would be "how many cards do you need?" and "what sort of quality?". There are places that sell perfed sheets for do-it-yourself projects, in conventional playing card and larger sizes, but these are just generic cardstock. I think there may be some special coated stock that gives good results with inkjet printers, but these would still be inferior to "real" cards. You might check out:

http://bgdf.com/catalog/

http://www.plaincards.com/Shop/shopdisplaycategories.asp

http://www.newtscards.com/search_results.asp?iLevel=2&subcat=82

Greg
BTRC

[David "Czar Fnord" Artman]

Watch this page:
http://www.avalonteam.com/cap_cards.html

Not sure how big a single run would have to be, but the owner is very attentive and helpful.

[Paul Czege]

Hi David,

You've used Avalon? Can you post about the experience?

Paul

[joepub]

Paul,
David has worked with them while helping me on Perfect (He has been doing book layout, etc).

I can speak to my involvement with Avalon, although I don't yet have a finished book in my hands.
Lance has been courteous, easy to work with, and good at answering questions.

I've heard good things about their finished products... but obviously won't be able to pass judgement on that until I have my books in hand.

I highly reccomend them.

[phetish]

Let's see,  # of Cards...

80 per deck with full color. each card has a common back with full color.

quality needs to be professional.  home made just won't cut it.

derek

[phetish]

oh, by the way thank you to everyone that has posted so far!

I have spoken to the folks at Avalon, but they are not quite ready to print cards yet.

i haven't gotten ahold of the folks at RapidPOD, but i'm a little bit leary of their reputation at this point.

any other sources that anyone knows of?

derek

[phetish]

Just an update -

I contacted RapidPOD - they are not setup to do larger sized cards but expect to be in the 90 days or so. 

Still looking...

derek

[David "Czar Fnord" Artman]

80 per deck with full color. each card has a common back with full color.

A quick couple of points:
1) IIRC, you are probably going to have a number of cards per sheet which is the square of some number; ex: 81, 100, 121. This is because the number of cards on a single sheet is equal horizontally and vertically, for cards with a standard playing deck aspect ratio.
2) Your calculations for number of cards should refer to the TOTAL number in a complete set, including multiples for rarity. So if, say, you have 20 commons that get printed three times per sheet, you use up 60 cards out of that 121.
3) Full color back is fine, so long as you find out from your printer about their requirements for the bleed: a "margin" outside of the printing area which must be printed to allow the cutter some "slop". For that matter, there will probably be a laundry list of requirements to prepare the cards to send to the printer; check out Carta Mundi's (1.7 MB PDF).
4) If you have rarity in your card set, you might want to seriously consider how you distribute the cards across the sheet(s). Again, IIRC, the "randomizers" for card sorters aren't quite as random as one would like (of course; they're mechanical) and so there's a sort of strategy to how you arrange your commons, uncommons, and rares on the sheet. I think it's something like a yin-yang spiral, with the rares along the S-shaped intersection of the yin and yang, and then some other pattern within that for distributing the uncommons. And another one, for distributing multiple copies of the same common/uncommon.

You could probably find the articles from which I culled all of this, years ago, if you search on "Jyhad" (stet) and "Sort" and "Carta Mundi". Wizards of the Coast learned the hard way about "random" sorters: many require a manual re-sort step to actually deliver near-randomness, which was forgotten on one run of Jyhad. As a result, we were able to send in cards from a List A for ones chosen from a List B. We thought this was a very nice bennie, as there were some UBER cards on B and we had a LOT of A (we'd bought, I think, ten or fifteen boxes among a groups of five friends!).

HTH;
David

[AvalonPOD]

The best I can say for Avalon's short run card capabilities, is that we are a few weeks out.  We have just been having a huge run around with the company making our dies, to the point I have a meeting first thing Monday morning (6/19/06) to talk to another local die maker.  The first die maker not only doubled the original estimates for the dies, but they also changed the sizes of the files I sent them for the dies (which I luckily caught).

We are having dies made for 4 different size cards: biz card (2"x3.5"); bridge (56 x 87 mm), poker(63 x 88 mm) and a tarot(3” x 5” or 76.2 x 127 mm ). For each card size for are looking at a approx 60 and 120 card tuck box. Also looking at a larger box, similar to what the Munchkin used to come in.

We were also able to secure a supply of real playing card stock with a clay core that works on our digital machine.  I've actually heard it called a clay core and a clay coating, but whatever it really is, the stock has more spring to it than normal paper stock does.

And we have found a coating that works on the digital prints.  So, we will be able to do a gloss and flat varnish on the cards.  We have done some cards already for Dan Ridenhour over at Digital Alchemy that were uncoated and he's reported that they have held up very well.

Now we will not be doing any sort of foil packs, the equipment is just too expensive.  I'm also not sure about randomization, we have a decent variable data software package, but I'm not sure just how we would do that effectively yet.  The cards will be shrink wrapped, but will not have the pull string for unwrapping.  Again, the equipment is just too expensive.

We are also still testing materials and methods for board game production.  Mostly down to securing a suitable and affordable backing material.

I hope that helps answer some of the questions of where we are and what we will be offering.  Feel free to chime in to offer suggestion in what we are looking to offer.

Thanks,

Lance Williams
Avalon Innovations
www.AvalonTeam.com

[Ron Edwards]

I do not recommend RapidPOD. Ken Whitman makes a career out of telling people what they want to hear. "Ninety days or so" is standard bullshit.

I have tried to warn people here against working with him in the past, and tried to soft-peddle it. My soft-peddling was actually mis-read as a recommendation by at least one person. I watched that person wait until well into GenCon for his books to arrive, weeks behind schedule. I watched him open those books to demonstrate to customers, and watched the pages fall onto the floor.

So soft-peddling is over. I've met Ken. He's nice. Which means nothing in this context. What matters is that he is extremely well-known for telling people what they want to hear, and since he sounds nice (and may well mean it), people believe it. But his career in RPG publishing for almost twenty years is littered with the bloated bodies of abandoned, ill-managed, or not-followed-up projects.

Full disclosure: I have not worked with Ken and have no history of financial loss, disagreement, or disgruntlement with him. This post concerns printing and publishing, based on my observations of others and their companies, for quite a long time.

I do not recommend using Rapid POD.

Best, Ron

[guildofblades]

Hi Lance,

I would be interested in hearing your pricing for printing POD cards (poker sized) for 1/1, 4/4, and 4/1. With listed prices for any breaks on volume.

We do our own boxes, so mainly just interested in the cards.

Thanks,
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com

[daMoose_Neo]

Agreed on RapidPOD, I was one of the publishers screwed at GenCon last year and dealt with him lying through his teeth over on RPG.net's forums. Eventually he made good with several of the publishers wronged, but way too late - I personally missed out on a LOT of orders through Key20 because of Ken's timing. And as for his card printing- that was always "Next week" last summer, with no explanation. So I don't know that they're actually operational.

As for card printing: Avalon looks to be the best bet (and I'm eagerly awaiting- I've got dibs!!) for any kind of short run printing of cards. The other companies mentioned are NOT short run companies, or at least to them "short run" is about 1000+ units (and its incredibly difficult to move that many card games- RPGs are a breeze compared to them). Early quotes put most domestic printers at about $5-6 a deck at low quantities, which means about $5-$6k. One company in Michigan, DeLano, will go lower than 1000, but the rates are just nuts at that point.

And as for Avalon's printing, awesome. Lance is very cool, works with you on anything and everything, quality is awesome, and he won't let poor quality out of the house. Did have a couple books per run that came out messed up, Lance checked with me and adjusted the order & billing accordingly. Sometimes he's a bit slow on e-mails, but he does get back to you and gets things taken care of.

[phetish]

Well, it sounds like Avalon is the way to go... I'm very happy to hear that Lance's quality is excellent - I'm preparing some files to have printed on his card stock, so that I can see the quality of the prints and the cardstock.

I'll report back once I've had a chance to see them.

Derek

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

You may be pleasantly surprised by the capabilities of your local print shop. I was.