Thanks Don, appreciate the kind words!

So everybody knows, the August Club packages will begin shipping on Thursday the 11th, so you'll want to make sure you're subscribed before then to get in on the action.

This is probably my favorite Card Club so far.  I love both of these decks, and they look fantastic in person!

Thanks Don!

Agreed - Damask stock/finish is superb!

Photos and a pretty cool video can all be found over at Penguin!

Hi everyone!

A lot of you are familiar with Jared's Architect deck, either from his Kickstarter campaign or from being in Card Club.

I'm happy to say that the deck will finally hit public release this Thursday. They're printed by EPCC on Damask finish with a gorgeous blue paper tuck with silver foil.

Thanks!

Kevin

Hey everyone!  I hope you all had an awesome (and safe!) 4th of July weekend.

I wanted to let everyone know about some changes we're making to the Card Club subscription at Penguin.

If you want to stop reading now and just get all the official info, the link is:

http://www.penguinmagic.com/p/5628


We're keeping the Club at the $20/month plus shipping price tag, and it still contains 4 decks.  However, we're switching to include ONLY decks produced by Penguin and we'll be including 2 each of 2 different designs.  You get one to open and one to keep sealed.  This means a little less variety in each package, but it also eliminates the chance that you might receive a deck that you already own.  It also means you can ignore Penguin release schedules, you'll get decks before they go on sale to everyone else, and you'll get them at the lowest price.

We'll be shipping the July packages later this week, and once a month's packages have gone out there's no backtracking - you can't retroactively subscribe.

This month we have one deck from EPCC and one from USPCC, both designed by Jared Hansen.  I know a lot of you probably backed his Architect deck on Kickstarter, and it is finally seeing the light of day with a massively souped-up tuck box!


Architect: Designed by Jared Hansen and printed by the Expert Playing Card Company, the Architect deck is truly a sight to behold. The tuck box is crafted from a beautiful, heavy-duty deep blue matte paper that's just dripping with intricately applied silver foil. The cards themselves have the look of a blueprint, featuring a beautiful blue & white back design with fine line work. The faces are Expert Standard with a custom Ace of Spades and identical jokers. The handling is superb thanks to Damask finish, which has a medium thickness and snap with an exquisite embossing pattern and texture.

Steeplechase Park: Designed by Jared Hansen, this deck is a tribute to Coney Island's original and longest-running amusement park. The design is wildly colorful and vibrant - a perfect deck for summer. The faces have been completely recolored, and you receive matching custom Jokers and a custom Ace of Spades, as well as 2 useful gaff cards. The custom tuck box is closed with a custom sticker seal. Printed by USPCC on Bicycle stock with premium "Magic" finish, the deck feels and handles wonderfully. Only 2,500 made!

Just a quick note to say that the Black Honeybees will be released this Thursday, the 16th.

The original Honeybees sold out in 2 days, so we expect these to go quickly as well!

Hey guys.  Cat is officially out of the bag on Black Honeybees now that they are in the hands of our Card Club members as part of June's subscription package.  (Side note - Card Club will be seeing a lot of early peeks at decks, receiving them before general retail, and of course at the insane per-deck value that we offer in Card Club).

The Black Honeybees will be releasing soon, though I don't have an exact date for you just yet.  They are very much like the original Yellow deck, but now with an awesome black back design.  We also adjusted the colors in the Ace, Jokers, Courts, and Tuck as well to match.  Bee stock, Magic Finish, Traditionally cut, and only 2,500 made.

I'll be sure to let everyone know when we have a release date, and in the meantime, those of you who've gotten early decks please feel free to chime in!

Thanks Justin!  The color looks great in person - my quick cell phone shot definitely isn't doing it justice.  Everyone I've shown the deck to live has really liked it.

Haha, if anyone wants to talk about gaffs I'm more than happy to talk about that here, via PM, email, etc.

I agree that "good" or "average" are relative terms when it comes to card handling.

I would not categorize USPCC or EPCC/LPCC as average quality cards - they are well above average.  They are simply what we are accustomed to and so anything that's not as good can sometimes feel really sub-par.

These cards feel most similar to Master Finish in terms of their slickness and glossiness, but they are not as smooth handling as Master.  The stock is also not nearly as stiff as Master - it took me much less effort to spring this deck out of the box than a Master finish deck.

I would classify the handling here as average.  I can do perfect Faros with them, I can fan them, spring them, do DL's, various color changes.  These do not Faro equally in either direction - they are definitely more on the traditionally cut side (Face down faros are easy, face-up are much more difficult).

Many decks that come from overseas I would classify as below-average.  I'd classify these as similar to (or maybe even a small step above) an MPC deck - depending on your personal preferences.

It's not an unusable deck, you could certainly use it for many effects or for card games.

We've had a lot of interest in these over at Penguin, and the initial assumption was that they were printed by EPCC/LPCC based on the sideways tuck.

I have emailed with Bill Kalush as well as USPCC, and they have confirmed that the deck is not from any of them.

Since Murphy's is the distributor of the deck, I've checked with them and this was the response I received:

"These come from an overseas supplier that is a boutique printer, but doesn’t provide their actual printing company name. There is no printing information on the deck."

Not a lot to go on.  I have a deck on order and will post more impressions and photos once I can get some hands-on time with them.

Wishing Tom a full and speedy recovery!!  We will all be thinking of you!

I'd thought we had a topic on this, but I couldn't seem to find it.  (Don, please delete and/or merge if this post isn't needed)

But I wanted to share with you guys that the White Tally-Ho decks are finally available from Penguin Magic, and I'm happy to say they've been worth the wait.

Some of you have seen sneak peeks of these at conventions, or got your decks a few days ago if you're in Card Club.

We're offering a special discounted mixed brick (6 each of Fan and Circle) for just $79.95 today only.

http://www.penguinmagic.com/p/6318

Thanks everyone!

Original plan was to launch the White Tally in November.  Shortly before release, we found some production flaws affecting a significant percentage of the tuck boxes, so we held off on launch until we could address that with USPCC.

They're being re-worked as we speak, and we now expect to launch some time in January.  I'll post updates in the Tally thread as we get closer to nailing down a specific date.