Nathan, your numbers are wrong on so many different levels.
Just as 54 people assembling one car don't take as long as or longer than a single person doing the same job, 54 artists working on the same deck, each on a single card, don't take longer than one guy making a deck of the same level of detail.
As far as the payment and costs and such - they CHOSE to artificially set the number available at 999 decks. They could just as easily have made more, with a simple outlay of more cash, and the cost per deck would be lower; more money for them while at the same time lower prices for us. This might dilute the "collectibility", but in this market that whole concept is a little overworked these days, with this being just the newest example. And you're not factoring in at all the ancillary profits that can be made - marketing posters, t-shirts, selling art prints, etc.
Don't get me wrong - I understand the work involved and believe that the artists worked hard and should get their due. But as a collective, they decided it was more important to them to make this a limited edition "fetish" item rather than a real deck of cards. Let's call this what it really is - an art project, not a true deck of cards.
Here's the bullshit of the market: at one time in history, deck designers HAD to make a deck in a limited edition because simply put, they couldn't afford to print more. Young upstarts either beg and borrow to start a deck design business or they run to Kickstarter with a dream and a plan, they make their deck and, if they have the right stuff, it sells out and is a success in terms of being sold out, if not always being profitable. (And yes, sometimes it is indeed profitable, but not always.)
But collectors have pounced on this, pushing the concept that it's the rarity and not the design that's pushing the value of the deck. Which frankly, the designer shouldn't care so much about - they're not seeing any of that money in after-market sales, right?
But in a bizarre way, they at least think that they are. They may be right, it's hard to say. The money they see doesn't come from that first deck that was a short-run design which sold out fast and sells for a premium today, if you can find it. It comes from the market's perception that the second deck will ALSO become the uber-rare and highly-sought rare fetish item that the first one became, and push for it to be made. The artist makes it, it sells out, lather, rinse, repeat - and voila, you have companies like the D & D Playing Card Co.
But the artists don't need to feed the collector machine. Ellusionist doesn't, not to the extent that D&D does. (And I'm only using those two as examples - they aren't the ONLY examples in the marketplace.) Most of what E sells isn't rare - in fact, none of it is, because they don't even sell the rare stuff except for the one experiment with the red Artifice deck. They GIVE the rare stuff away! And people still want their cards, but they're easier to get because they aren't limited editions - they just BUY them, and E collects the cash, not some speculator who buys cards waiting for the value to increase...
I'm going to stop my rant there. I need to take a nap...
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