I posted this in another thread but I thought it should have its own thread as I have not seen one show up yet. These were posted on Instagram by user @valenzuelaadrian http://instagram.com/valenzuelaadrian

Kinda pays homage to the buck twins (buck logo), rounders (back) and ellusionist (Republic no.2)

Anyone ever just have old decks handed to you because people know you collect cards? This just happened to me and it came with a rather interesting story.

Just recently someone sent me a letter from London with a deck of cards called Black Pack. The letter tells the story of a man named Alasdair MacGaw (he has since passed away). According to the letter, about 25 years ago Alasdair discovered that casinos only used decks of playing cards once. Since London is multicultural he believed that black people were alienated by seeing white faces on every set of paying cards. His idea was to have a set of cards with black faces on the Kings, Queens and Jacks.

He had this set made up in a print run of only 200 and then tried selling them to all the casinos in London. However, he hit a wall because he could not afford a large enough print run to make the deck cost low enough for the casinos to buy them.

At any rate, the deck was printed by Fournier in the late 80's. It is a pinnacle sized deck and this is apparently the only one left in existence. It is marked as a first edition, has some cool design elements and is overall a nice deck. It is a smooth finish and is still rather snappy but I do not want to mess with it too much.

It probably has more sentimental value to me as it was sent to me with a personal letter describing the story behind the deck. I do not think anyone is looking for this deck or even knows it existed but I thought the forum members would enjoy it. Also, if Kickstarter were around back then, I feel like he would have been on it trying to get rich. 

This might be a topic already but I am on my mobile phone and searching was being a pain.

So this is an open ended question that takes a lot of things into consideration but what is the going rate for a complete custom playing card deck design? As a non designer I constantly see projects go up on KS that only cover production costs (if that). If we put quality at Jackson's or encarded's level of work, what is a fair cost for that? Obviously it needs to cover their time and work but it also needs to fit within card economics or else i could see decks being really expensive. Like would a $5k design or a $10k design make sense for cards. The design is there but is it fair for the price of the deck once you take production costs into account?

Bc i run tuckcase and speak with authority on there, I was recently contacted by a person looking for advice on this and I honestly had no advice to give. I told him to come here and ask or go directly to a designer but I havent seen a post about it since I was asked this and it got me curious so I'm now asking.

Let the opinions roll bc I'd love to be enlightened on this matter.

We are in for some teasing over the next couple of days.....for those that haven't seen it yet

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/72004666/empire-playing-cards-built-to-conquer

Arcane and Infinity designer Lee McKenzie's new solo project.

More info:

http://tuckcase.com/2013/06/18/kickstarter-project-ellusionist-designer-lee-mckenzie-goes-solo-with-empire-playing-cards/

I spoke with the designer of some of Ellusionist's most popular decks, Lee McKenzie, this week regarding his involvement with Ellusionist. I posted the interview on my site http://tuckcase.com/2013/05/23/exclusive-interview-with-the-artist-behind-ellusionist-playing-cards-lee-mckenzie/ but below is just a small snippet of what was said...

In 2008, I started designing the Arcane deck and I became the Ellusionist playing card designer. My dream of launching my own deck was put on hold for the next 5 years…but not for much longer.

I think you guys can speculate....

Part 2 of the Federal 52 will launch mid June and will feature the Silver Certificate deck and the reserve note deck. I spoke to Jackson and he shared an image of the tuck case for the Federal 52 reserve note deck.  Attached below.

I also did a q and a with him posted here.

http://tuckcase.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/kickstart-project-federal-52-reserve-note-tuck-case-qa-with-jackson-robinson/

Just saw this deck on Kickstarter. Gonna be honest, I think if you touch Egyptian art you should do more with it than this. I do not have high hopes for this deck because IMO I think execution is poor and the design is less than desirable. Maybe I am too harsh.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/524398030/tutankhamun-playing-card-deck-printed-by-the-uspcc?ref=live