It's Saturday morning, May 5th (and my mother's birthday!), and welcome to the latest edition of the Kickstarter Card and Deck-Related Projects Report! I'm your host, Don Boyer, "live" from New York.
-------------------------------------
What do we have on tap for this week on "The Rundown" - what progress has been made since last week?
Fri 04 May 2012, 16:45 UTC - Vlad Korzinin's
Creative Cards: $2,878 raised, $9,000 goal, 32%. UNSUCCESSFUL. While the project did gain about a thousand dollars over last week, there was just too much against this deck getting made, not the least of which being the high cost of a deck.
Fri 11 May 2012, 02:43 UTC - Amber Tapper's
R@n$0m Playing Cards: $632 raised, $10,000 goal, 6%. With less than a week to go and only up two hundred dollars from last week, this deck appears to be heading to the same place as the newspaper clippings used to create it - the recycling bin.
Mon 14 May 2012, 21:07 UTC - Alfonse Prince's
Mystic Deck, Techno Edition: $1,884 raised, $12,000 goal, 15%. Only up fifty bucks this week. What little steam this deck may have had appears to have fled, with only a week and a half to go and a loooong way to twelve thousand.
Sat 02 Jun 2012, 23:28 UTC - Ray Thomas'
Hipster Playing Cards: $1,072 raised, $3,500 goal, 27%. Up $125 this week, not as strong as last week. At four weeks remaining, while it isn't impossible to hit the goal, he won't be doing it at this speed.
Sun 03 Jun 2012, 18:34 UTC - Clint Griffin's
SIGIDI: African Heritage Playing Cards: $391 raised, $25,000 goal, 1%. Up twenty-one bucks - that more than twice what it earned in the last two weeks. But with under a month to go, I don't hold out a lot of hope for this one.
Fri 22 June 2012, 19:01 UTC - 4pm Designs'
"The Grid" Playing Cards: $16,853 raised, $5,000 goal, 337%. WOW, that's a whopper of a success story! There's a month and a half left and this project's just blown up all over the place! Having crossed the 200% mark, this will be a Bicycle-branded deck from USPC. There's been some debate over an alteration to the Joker design - traditional look or jokers on what look like light cycles - but it appears they may be sticking with the more traditional look. I'm glad - those light cycles might have drawn a cease-and-desist from Disney, Inc., owners of "Tron".
-------------------------------------
We have many decks this week to introduce to you in "New Business" - good, bad and...well, I'll let you decide!
Thu 31 May 2012, 18:56 UTC - Chuck Brodd's
Phil's Poker Cards were presented using a most unusual sales pitch - it sounded as if Chuck was expecting defeat for the project from day one! He comes out and explains that the deck is actually being made as a future product for a pool hall that he'd like to open up. The deck is very stylish, 100% plastic, and would be at home at almost any casual guys-hanging-out poker game, with imagery of darts and boards, billiards and playing card suits tastefully laid out on the card back. He wants to produce in five colors, but for the moment is sticking to just two: black if he hits 100%, gold as well if he hits 200%. A single deck is $20 - very costly, even for plastic - but the price comes down dramatically if you opt for two at only $25. He's aiming for USPC to print it on their Prestige plastic stock, so it should have good handling for playing cards or magic, maybe not as good for some flourishes. He's at $1,768 raised, $14,000 goal, 12%, with about three-and-a-half weeks remaining.
Sat 02 June 2012, 19:49 UTC - Patrick Burke and Ethan Soper, the two principles of design house beta17, present
ULTRAVIOLET Playing Cards. The deck has an attractive shade of purple on the backs and a hyper-futuristic design, generally well-received with a few exceptions. The biggest hang-up we're having with this deck is that it's bloody expensive: $13 for a single pack. Strangely, the best deal on the deck is at the $100 tier - one brick, or about $8.33 a pack. The prices go UP instead of DOWN for bigger bulk purchases! All the other tiers are at least $10 a pack. It gives one pause... Right now, it's at $3,689 raised, $15,000 goal, 24%, with four weeks to go.
Tue 05 June 2012, 19:41 UTC - Juan G. Perez'
Bicycle Eclipse Playing Cards, by Hidden Mirrors comes in with a unique premise or two. While it's a good design choice to put a white border around a black deck, some Discourse members were questioning certain other design choices, such as pips that appear both in color with white outlines and totally white on the same card (sort of a fusion of the Bicycle Pirate and De'vo's Blades series). Also off-putting were the indices that are split on the border between black center field and white border, resulting in a bizarre-looking, hard-to-read appearance (which is ironic, considering that Juan was actually trying to make them easier to read). His inclusion of his own MUSIC in the pledge rewards only added more bizarreness to the mix. The project currently stands at $3,089 raised, $10,000 goal, 30%.
Sun 17 June 2012, 14:46 UTC - Nick Lampsas'
Metagalactic "Blackout" Glow In the Dark Playing Cards (a mouthful if I ever saw one) are among the most bizarre offerings I've seen in a straight-up playing card deck thus far. He says in his pitch, plain as day, that "NO. I am not selling decks of cards. This is not a Home Shopping Network." Uh, hello? If you aren't selling them, what incentive do people have to BACK them? The answer is NONE! I suppose it's for the better, though - these cards fell out of the ugly tree and hit most of the branches on the way down. He has added playing card deck rewards starting with two decks at the $25 tier, but he tops out at a mere four decks. All the rewards higher than include either autographs (doubling the price for them!) or having your face immortalized as a court card or a joker. Honestly, folks - would you plunk down a grand for your face on a joker and four decks? The fact that they glow in the dark on both sides is just icing on the gimmick cake - and you know this isn't a USPC project! At a month-and-a-half to go, he's at one sole backer, $25 raised, $6,000 goal, rounded down to 0%. I hope Nick's not holding his breath.
-------------------------------------
And now, for this week's "Not Your Average 52-Plus-Two" - your non-standard deck projects. As usual, this does not include specialized games using non-standard playing cards, "deck building" games or collectible playing cards, but it does include art decks, traditional decks using designs other than the standard Anglo-Rouen 52-card deck (such as tarock, tarocchi, skat, hanafuda, etc.), and tarot and other fortune-telling decks.
Thu 10 May 2012, 03:59 UTC - Ariana Osborne's
Cartes Infernales: $20,836/$3,666 (568%). It's closing in on the overfunding multiplier record for a playing card project, held by Cosmo Solano's Bicycle Spectrum deck at 704%.
Fri 11 May 2012, 08:23 UTC - Sa'ahrah Ester Felix's
"Sacred Awakening" Card Deck: $141/$5K (3%). After being unchanged for three week in a row, this project actually LOST fifteen dollars in the last week.
I have one more deck to add, but I'm out of time for now - to be continued...
EDIT: I'm back! It's Sunday, May 6th, and here's that last deck I mentioned.
You might remember this deck when it debuted, the
Triple Topper. It was a bold if misguided concept - in addition to value and suit, he made color an independent variable, hence the three-dimensional nature of the deck. 5 value times 5 suits times 5 colors left you with a 125-card deck (try shoving that into your jeans pocket)! The guy garnered a whopping three backers, $90 in contributions, but with a $6,000 goal, that wasn't happening.
Fri 29 June 2012, 22:18 UTC - Well, ever the optimist, Brian Ciesicki is back, with the exact same
Triple Topper deck, but with a marginally more modest goal of $5,000. With just under eight weeks to go, he's earned himself a huge $20 sum from 2 backers. I'm not hopeful that this project will fare much better than the last, and that making the goal $500 still wouldn't do it. Playing cards as we know and love them can be complex enough without having to think three-dimensionally!
-------------------------------------
Thanks, and that's all for this week's report. Have a better one.
