Is it Just Me, or is Something Wrong?

[Rose]

Yes, originality is great, in the way the playing card world is right now there is a lot out there. 95% of the current KS look terrible, but the 5% that are good, are great. This over saturated place I believe has forced greater decks.
If you look at KS from 2 years ago the successful ones would now be considered average. Therefore the great designers NEED to be better. Win/win for collectors. Much more difficult however for designers.

Disagree. Shiny is good. (Done tastefully).

Agree, I do NOT understand limited editions.
As a designer I would want as many people seeing my decks AND opening them, appreciating them, and using them.
As a collector every time I see a post saying limited editions only 500, Starting at 12am EST, blah, blah, blah I never even click on the link. I know I probably cannot afford to buy a deck that I would never allow myself to open, for fear I am destroying something so precious.

Agree. The zombie, steampunk, skulls, etc are so overdone.

[RandCo]

After reading this topic, I believe Don’s comment on ‘Perceived’ versus ‘Actual’ value is the most insightful. I think the ‘Perceived Value’ of a ‘Limited Edition’ comes from sources other than playing cards, mainly the art world and the trading card world.

In the art world a limited edition is valuable. When artists make prints of their work it is almost always in a limited edition (retail posters excepted). This makes sense because the prints are usually done using serigraphy, etching techniques, or stone lithography. The printing method and the paper is expensive. The editions are usually somewhere between 50 and 250 and are always signed and numbered.

In the sports trading card and collectibles world a limited edition has value also. For example in an Upper Deck NFL 2010 card series there would be no limit, other than the market, to how many cards could be printed. But within the overall amount of cards there would be limited edition cards which would be randomly placed within the boxes or packets. These were special cards that were signed by the athlete or had game-used material. Depending on the athlete, some of these special limited edition cards can be worth hundreds of dollars. There is very rarely more than 100 limited edition cards for any given athlete in a series.

There is also the matter of rarity which adds value. Very old decks of playing cards are valuable the same way that old trading cards are valuable, because they are made of paper they rarely survive over 50 years or so. A limited edition implies a certain amount of rarity, but this is a very different type of rarity compared to antique rarity. This is why old comic books are so valuable even though there were thousands printed.

The main value of a work of art or a trading card is the fame of the artist or the athlete, the rarity is secondary.

In the custom playing card world, the limited editions are 1,000, 2,500 or even 5,000. Compared to art prints and limited edition trading cards, this is not very limited. Most Kickstarter custom decks are printed in these amounts whether they are ‘Limited Edition’ or not. When Jackson Robinson, who sells hundreds of thousands of his decks, makes a limited edition of 1,000, that means something. For the majority of custom card makers ‘Limited Edition’ doesn’t mean much.

When the successful established designers like Theory 11, Ellusionist, etc. make a deck with metallic foil and embossing on the tuck, which makes it more valuable than a normally printed deck, use ‘Limited Edition’ it has some meaning. But I think the value of these special premium decks is from how good they look, not how limited they are.

As a budding card designer I think putting ‘Limited Edition’ on a deck looks cool, but Don is right, it is almost meaningless. In the custom playing card market the perceived value of ‘Limited Edition’ is a far cry from real value.

[Don Boyer]

After reading this topic, I believe Don’s comment on ‘Perceived’ versus ‘Actual’ value is the most insightful. I think the ‘Perceived Value’ of a ‘Limited Edition’ comes from sources other than playing cards, mainly the art world and the trading card world.

In the art world a limited edition is valuable. When artists make prints of their work it is almost always in a limited edition (retail posters excepted). This makes sense because the prints are usually done using serigraphy, etching techniques, or stone lithography. The printing method and the paper is expensive. The editions are usually somewhere between 50 and 250 and are always signed and numbered.

In the sports trading card and collectibles world a limited edition has value also. For example in an Upper Deck NFL 2010 card series there would be no limit, other than the market, to how many cards could be printed. But within the overall amount of cards there would be limited edition cards which would be randomly placed within the boxes or packets. These were special cards that were signed by the athlete or had game-used material. Depending on the athlete, some of these special limited edition cards can be worth hundreds of dollars. There is very rarely more than 100 limited edition cards for any given athlete in a series.

There is also the matter of rarity which adds value. Very old decks of playing cards are valuable the same way that old trading cards are valuable, because they are made of paper they rarely survive over 50 years or so. A limited edition implies a certain amount of rarity, but this is a very different type of rarity compared to antique rarity. This is why old comic books are so valuable even though there were thousands printed.

The main value of a work of art or a trading card is the fame of the artist or the athlete, the rarity is secondary.

In the custom playing card world, the limited editions are 1,000, 2,500 or even 5,000. Compared to art prints and limited edition trading cards, this is not very limited. Most Kickstarter custom decks are printed in these amounts whether they are ‘Limited Edition’ or not. When Jackson Robinson, who sells hundreds of thousands of his decks, makes a limited edition of 1,000, that means something. For the majority of custom card makers ‘Limited Edition’ doesn’t mean much.

When the successful established designers like Theory 11, Ellusionist, etc. make a deck with metallic foil and embossing on the tuck, which makes it more valuable than a normally printed deck, use ‘Limited Edition’ it has some meaning. But I think the value of these special premium decks is from how good they look, not how limited they are.

As a budding card designer I think putting ‘Limited Edition’ on a deck looks cool, but Don is right, it is almost meaningless. In the custom playing card market the perceived value of ‘Limited Edition’ is a far cry from real value.

Even in the worlds of sports memorabilia and comic books, there's really just one thing that determines value.  It has nothing to do with the fame of the player or artist, the rarity of the collectible, etc.  The sole determining factor is "What is someone willing to pay for this object?"  You mentioned limited edition trading cards with pieces of game-used material, typically a piece of a jersey, a slice of wood from a bat, etc.  Yes, they're rare and yes, they're associated with the famous people who used them.

But remember there was a huge bottoming-out of the market for baseball memorabilia which started with the most recent players' strike and it took years for the market to recover - many would argue it still hasn't fully recovered.  At that point, very few people were willing to pay the top-dollar prices some articles once commanded.  Even now, with the economy being pretty soft still for everyone except the one-percenters, who seem to be rolling in cash, luxury items like sports cards of all kinds of varieties are either selling for a fraction of what they once did or they've been taken off the market by sellers hoping to wait out the economic climate in order to make the kinds of profit they would have before the market collapse.

So there could be 10,000 of something, or 2,500 of it or even 100.  If you can't find someone willing to pay a given dollar amount, it's NOT WORTH THAT AMOUNT.  I don't care how rare it is, or who made it, or what materials were used.  A clothing retailer in 1985 could have spent hundreds of dollars getting a shipment of Sergio Valente jeans into his store - if they were left forgotten in the stock room, he'd be lucky to get tens of dollars for them today, even with them being pretty rare in this market.  Heck, I make "rare pre-fossilized coprolites" every day in highly limited editions, but there's absolutely no one that's going to bang on my door offering to buy any, no matter how rare.

[Fess]

- Post comes from the Ancient CPC Bike branded deck, thing can be found Here -

CPC retail sells a lot of custom decks. They have a great reputation of customer service too. They're doing a great job in that, what they do buy and sell decks to the public. I wish I could say the same about their creation of custom decks, it's almost as if they know absolutely nothing about playing cards with some of these designs they're throwing up on kickstarter lately. I mean, pop up their created list and it reads like a whats what of what not to do when implementing design of playing cards. Some of the ideas have been outstanding, it's the execution that's seriously lacking.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's me who knows absolutely nothing about playing cards and CPC has it's finger on the pulse of what really works. I don't think the KS numbers reflect that, but hey like I said. Maybe I'm wrong and this is exactly whats missing from the card industry. If it's not, please for the love of all things in this world quality! Please take the crayon set away and lock it in a booby trapped treasure chest, stick it in a concrete tomb filled with cat shit, seal it up, then cover said tomb with broken glass, and bury it deep deep in the bowels of the earth somewhere where they do not fraq.

Don you brought up an interesting thing in the thread for Anicent whatever crap deck CPC is trying to kickstart. (Sorry sum up version I don't know what the decks name is and don't care)

USPC has allowed the Bicycle brand to become so diluted and polluted with all the utter garbage they've permitted people to put out in its name, it's been rendered worthless.  Who cares about yet-another craptacular Bicycle deck from some guy I've never heard of before and will probably never hear about again - unless he gets a job at CPC, naturally...  CPC is making Bill Merz's Bicycle decks look good, and to me, that's an incredible feat previously thought impossible.

USPC is facilitating this trash.  Why the hell would I want to buy USPC decks again?  Over 125 years in the business and they have yet to master proper registration between faces, backs and the cutting die, despite getting a state-of-the-art facility only five years ago!  Their new motto might as well be "Good enough for government work!"  Bicycle has become the "government cheese" of the playing card industry!

I think if USPCC implemented some from of quality check in the design of custom decks to wear the bike badge, there wouldn't be anything other than rider backs coming out of USPCC. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad. I don't think it would help anything at all actually. I think it's the custom decks that wear the bike badge that drive things forward. USPCC's designs lately, well they suck. So them saying yay or nay to a deck based upon whatever artistic impression they get by a deck is a very bad idea. Remember, they thought 808 Perspective was a delightful deck worthy of the club brand.

Even a vote system online where a bunch of non-card buyers can vote is a very bad idea. There is no accounting for taste. It's something entirely subjective and that by it's nature  scatters things all over there place. Believe it or not  there are some people, maybe four, who think that latest CPC kickstarter deck, whatever the hell it's called, is the greatest thing since sliced cheese and it's exactly what they've been searching for their entire lives. This deck will complete them. As they say, there is one born every minute.

This kind of pig vomit that's been pouring out of CPC this year is not going to kill the industry in my opinion. While it's not ever going to enhance the industry or the hobby, I think it's a great resource for new designers on what NOT TO DO. These decks are very unlikely to ever sell out and years from now if CPC survives, they likely will, will be a reminder to them of what not to do.

I just wish it would end. I think they've shown everyone what not to do by now.

[Don Boyer]

I, too, wish it would end - but it won't.

I think I'm starting to see something in USPC's logic regarding the mishandling of their Bicycle brand.  Think about it: Bicycle Rider Backs are printed in the millions each year.  (I'm actually guessing, because I could find no sales figures for USPC in a quick search, but it's a fairly safe assumption, what with 400 million people in the US and the fact that they sell in other countries as well, though in much smaller amounts.)  The typical Bicycle-branded custom deck these days is printed in the very low thousands - and some want to print even smaller amounts.  A deck printed in the millions annually will probably be seen by most of the nation's population at some point in their lives while a deck printed just once in a run that's a fraction of the size will be seen, statistically speaking, by almost no one.  2,500 decks of a particular design, if only sold in the US, means there's one deck for every 160,000 people.  So while they are indeed throwing dirt on the Bicycle name by using few to no criteria at all for a deck's inclusion, they don't care because it's just a tiny spot near the back and no one will notice it...

If CPC was printing these, ahem, "decks" in quantities much larger, say a million-deck run, I wonder if USPC or Jarden would say anything about it, or just let them produce the deck that sinks the brand?  I'm inclined to think they'd just take the money and run, worrying about the name brand only after the damage was done.