Wow! It's crazy what's going on. It will be interesting to see how this will work. This is great idea. My concern would be too much competition. You have Jackson doing something similar, and also Deckstarter. I think the key will be pricing. It's OK to have a $15-$25 deck every once in a while. I think to be competitive with KS, decks will need to be in the $10-$12 delivered range. That's going to be hard with so many hands in the pot. Good luck! You have a real passion for cards, so I think that will give you an advantage over KS. They are only worried about there 5%

The deal is that Jackson's funding only his decks, D&D are just a passing fad, and they will likely have to do something different or at least quit selling decks for $20-$30 delivered. I am going to separate shipping from everything else, make it 3 tiered - US, canada & Mexico or "Rest of World"  with shipping costs calculated by weight, and decks will be $7-$8 except for the Chromografix™ ones, which obviously cost more to produce. Average delivered cost will be $11-$12 like you pay now, unless you are overseas, in which case you will be paying half as much for shipment.  The escrow of funds for everything eliminates any possible fraud and even stupidity in campaigns, and we guarantee delivery of rewards, like I said.

Sounds awesome. That's pricing just about anybody can afford. People will be more likely to use the cards as well. I love the art, tucks, embossing and all the extras of $20 decks, but It's hard for me to justify using them for more than a few hands of poker.

Well, you'll get to spend that on the Chromografix decks, because they cost about 220-250% of what a standard deck takes to create, but then again they will be the world's first large production ultra high definition photographic quality faces and 5-color process (CYMK + 1 or 5 spot color) backs as well.  I suspect that the actual selling price for the first group will be slightly higher, but they're not my decks.  The first groups sold will likely be Lotrek's "Dark Venexiana" decks, next up will be a special new artist's "Stained Glass" decks, and the 3rd is as yet to be determined, but I have a feeling you'll know the artist's work when you see it.  That sample "Boer of Hearts" up there is just that simply because there was no such thing as a digital quality deck back then.

That's nowhere near the anticipated quality of our decks which can have up to 16+ million colors on the uncut sheet, although of course I do know that the math works out to roughly 7 million dots on the face of a poker card at 1000dpi, so we'll probably go up to 1200dpi or even 1600dpi after we get going.  To compare, most decks done until recently are 400dpi vector graphics, and recently 600dpi has become more common.  That means 160,000 dots / square inch (400dpi) or 360,000 (600dpi), but ours will start out with 1,000,000 dots per square inch and go up to more than 2.5 million when we go to 1600dpi - we're going to do some amazing things for the playing cards industry!

I have to keep a few tricks up my sleeve until we open for business...

Sounds awesome - so excited everyone above me gets a +1

Wow, I'm really looking forward to this! I really hope that this will encourage a lot of budding artists to be more likely to release their deck designs! I'd love to see all of these ventures thrive in their own niches, complementing each other with a different share of the market. My collection will continue to grow by leaps and bounds! This is a very exciting time in the deck collecting (As it relates to what I do with cards...YMMV!) world! Hopefully, everyone wins!

Since we already have the 'sandbox' (unbranded, no customization, no partner logos, etc) version as of Wednesday, I'm moving the target dates up by a week and it could slide this way again, still.  The launch date is now set for July 25th and we hope to really beta test July 4th, but if you'd like to test and look around now, the site is up and running on the vendor's website: http://card.crowdengine.com - feel free to come, log in (it boots you off as soon as you register so you can do the required e-mail address verification) and log in and look around.  If you do, please keep a pen and paper handy, or "notepad.exe" running so you can take notes about what doesn't look right or work right (or as expected) and send it along to me at "cardlauncher@gmail.com".

Also, "CardLauncher.com" no longer redirects to the "Something Wicked This Way Comes part 3" discussion on UC, it's a MailChimp e-address collection form so you can sign up to be notified a few days before we launch.

Thanks!

I signed the mailing list. Seems a great project.

Here's something to fix right off the bat http://www.cardlauncher.com/

I signed up for the mailing list, but the bottom message is cut off. You just need to make a few tweeks.

Subscribe to -be- notified

....why am I the only one who is bothered by typos? Please nobody answer that.

 Kick-starter is so popular and large because of it's API. From peeking at the files it looks like you have decided on Drupal for the CMS? Is this going to be set up where artists contact you directly and projects are selected by the admin and then are processed onto the site? Will it be  the admins that then work directly with the printer? My guess is you are focusing on a  smaller clientele than a "anyone with an idea" Kickstarter approach. Its a pretty neat idea, my only question being on the needed price for each deck. Kickstarter has the luxury of grossing pennies on the dollar, the software basically does all the middleman work,  but this model (unless im completely off) would take up a considerable amount of time per project.

Thanks, Sher.  The decks will be about $6-$7 for the basic ones, and shipping is calculated at handling from each of the fulfillment partners plus actual cost by 'bouncing' the weight off the USPS (or UPS or FedEx depending upon who's fulfilling) for "Express" shipping, if you chose. Lake Michigan Mailers already send everything up to 4 decks (13 ounces max) first class mail and anything more by Priority Mail 2-to-3 day, and will offer UPS "overnight" express - if you want it.  Kings Wild does not do express shipment, and Gambler's Warehouse also offers your choice of UPS or FedEx for Express shipment, FedEx overnight and UPS 2-to-3 day delivery.  Average cost will be $10-$11 for a single deck, and that's the worst case example, because 4 decks costs the same for shipping, meaning 4 decks would be around $28-$32 for standard shipping and "Express" is whatever you wish to pay for - and depends upon who the project manager picks for the rewards fulfillment process.  So, four decks will cost you $7-$8 each delivered.  All of them are basically a handling charge plus actual shipping, and "handling" includes packing materials.  The one gotcha is uncut sheets, because CL insists that they be shipped separately and that's adding about $8-$10 depending on which partner is picked.  We're just as passionate about playing cards as everyone else, and it's not going to be a "let's doodle on a piece of paper and run a KS campaign and take $20,000".  It's impossible to run a fraudulent campaign on our system due to the required escrow of funds for both production and fulfillment, and even those few that do self-fulfillment which we strongly discourage but allow for proven groups like Uusi, Jackson, Paul Carpenter, Chris Chelko ("Whispering Imps"), Shane Tyree and the like.  I single project fulfilled is not a "track record" of successful fulfillment, and we will not allow anyone to go outside the escrow system without one.  They also will not be able to display or trademarked "Guaranteed Rewards Delivery" logo either.  We simply cannot guarantee delivery for self-fulfilled campaigns, and that is quite clearly spelled out for both backers and clients (artists, designers or campaign managers that hire the artists & designers to do the artwork).  As we increase the volume, the partners will have to offer us even better rates, and that will make the costs for the backers go down as well.  The 'cart' model - nothing like anything you've ever seen from any CrowdFunding site - will allow you to pick multiples of any items that is allowed more than 1 up to the number set by the client, and add a single "Early Bird" or Limited tier as well, then the actual weight will be used to compute the shipping, which will be presented (if offered) both for standard and express methods.  You get what you pay for, as always.  That means that if the client picks LMM for fulfillment and you order a brick (or even 5 decks or more), it's automatically shipped Priority Mail inside the US (actually anything with a 5-digit ZIP code, so that includes Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Northern Marianas, etc).  Canada/Mexico is "Zone 2" and costs a little more, Zone 3 and beyond (up to Zone 19) are calculated precisely by destination if allowed by the fulfillment center or "homogenized" using a moving weighted average of all campaigns to date if not.  We look up the actual costs on USPS.com, UPS.com and FedEx.com using the weight plus packing materials and add 5% to insure that we don't shortchange the fulfillment partners, or the backers either.  The seller/client receives absolutely not one cent of the shipping costs, but because it has been traditionally calculated as part of the project funding goal, it still will be for us although we at first didn't want to do so.  We listened to the artists and designers that said it just wouldn't work because people are used to seeing it in that number and agreed they were correct.

Those prices are for the standard decks you are used to on KS, and can of course be higher for Limited Edition (we consider that 2500 decks or less, although in my mind a LE is 1000 or less, it's just not practical to do so any more) and certain things like artist signed items have to be self-fulfilled regardless of who does their normal fulfillment.  Of course if the artist is in the US, they could choose to sign these items and have the fulfillment center delivery them as well, but I feel it's unlikely to happen that way.  Anything beyond playing card decks and uncuts is not guaranteed, so coins, t-shirts, artwork, wooden display items, poker chips and cow chips for all we care are all self-fulfilled and not the companies main goal: "We're passionate about playing cards!".

Mike, I thumbed around the site. Looks pretty cool. Do you already have submissions?

The site isn't even alpha quality yet, it's just the white label version with a CardLauncher logo in the corner.  I'll have alpha with branding, partner logos, customizations we initially asked for in a few days and beta skin quality in about ten days.  Right now any projects that are built have the "no charge" token in them to prevent them from actually trying to authorize against PayPal - but we're building several projects this weekend, by Lotrek, RJ Tomlinson, and a couple of other people that I can't say - and Jackson is supposed to do one, but as always he's so busy I can't say for sure what day it will be done more what exactly he's going to do, either.  Bill Kalush is standing ready to make these decks happen, and of course now we've got USPCC and their Bicycle brand as partners with a dedicated Custom Decks sales rep, too.  It's getting closer by the day, and we're 75% customized for our part of it: Facebook & Twitter integration done, PayPal and Google Analytics done. We're waiting for the branding and customizations we've talked about to be coded and that's happening right now, along with code mods we've found in the pre-alpha testing, even.  I suspect a realistic launch date is about 15-July, but I won't commit until every single thing is working precisely like I wanted it to start with, and I've already put a design hold on things until what I wanted is done right first, then we'll add more features.  The "point and shoot" basket model instead of the "one tier fits all" model that every single other CrowdFunding site uses isn't in there yet, but it should be in the alpha code.  Beta code should have the shopping computations in it and then we're ready to launch as long as we don't see major problems, so two weeks out from there I'll unlock the doors.  I'm ready - have been, because I've been knee deep in this quietly for 5 months, almost 6 at this point.  I think everybody is ready - including the third graphics artist partner that I can't mention yet because he wants to be anonymous for now - but I know that you know him, you have to. That will come out in the next couple of weeks.  Be ready: "Expect the bets and handle the rest"...

Wait............wait.........I've got it!

The Don Boyer Fedora Hat deck is finally going to be made 


courtesy of Sparkz

Just remember, the last name is of French origin, so the "r" is silent!  And the fedora is dark gray, not green!