Nautical Deck from The Blue Crown

[Don Boyer]

https://www.facebook.com/events/372092409560912/

Comes out Thursday 8pm Eastern (Fri 00:00 UTC).

Red, blue and a rare white version.  They're pretty cool - Alex showed them to me over a month ago.

Still time to enter the contests!

[Maskedfreakinabox]

Love it!...or what glare lets me see of it.

[Card Player]

https://www.facebook.com/events/372092409560912/

Comes out Thursday 8pm Eastern (Fri 00:00 UTC).

Red, blue and a rare white version.  They're pretty cool - Alex showed them to me over a month ago.

Still time to enter the contests!

As per TBC email:

The cards are printed on a thin, flexible, and durable stock that's manufactured and hand-finished in Shanghai. The more they are used, the better these cards perform! The cards have a fine embossed texture, with a feel and handling unlike any other deck we've produced to date.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

[Don Boyer]

https://www.facebook.com/events/372092409560912/

Comes out Thursday 8pm Eastern (Fri 00:00 UTC).

Red, blue and a rare white version.  They're pretty cool - Alex showed them to me over a month ago.

Still time to enter the contests!

As per TBC email:

The cards are printed on a thin, flexible, and durable stock that's manufactured and hand-finished in Shanghai. The more they are used, the better these cards perform! The cards have a fine embossed texture, with a feel and handling unlike any other deck we've produced to date.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

Kevin was kind enough to send me one of each deck.  I'll take some photos later today.

[Card Player]

https://www.facebook.com/events/372092409560912/

Comes out Thursday 8pm Eastern (Fri 00:00 UTC).

Red, blue and a rare white version.  They're pretty cool - Alex showed them to me over a month ago.

Still time to enter the contests!

As per TBC email:

The cards are printed on a thin, flexible, and durable stock that's manufactured and hand-finished in Shanghai. The more they are used, the better these cards perform! The cards have a fine embossed texture, with a feel and handling unlike any other deck we've produced to date.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

Kevin was kind enough to send me one of each deck.  I'll take some photos later today.

That's very nice of Kevin. The design is going to be the least of this decks problems. Unless the quality has improved in the last two months since Global Titan, Shanghai could be a new low for TBC.

[Fred]

Now available at http://thebluecrown.com/playing-cards/nautical-playing-cards.html#prettyPhoto

I actually really dig the back design. Courts are a let down (wish they had a custom sailor theme..) and the aces are nothing too special. Price point for a single deck seems ridiculously high for a non USPCC deck, but at 12/24 decks the bulk discounts are pretty sweet. I lol'd at "you can buy a brick of red/blue now and we'll throw in a free white one (that will be available later this year!)"

Full description+ Images:

New Artist - New Printer - New Deck

The Nautical Deck is the brainchild of artist Edo Huang, and is reminiscent of a classic bordered Bee design. Everything about the deck is inspired by the sea. From the rope-like pattern & life preservers integrated into the back design, to the rope border on the court cards, and the impressive ship joker.

The cards are printed on a thin, flexible, and durable stock that's manufactured and hand-finished in Shanghai. The more they are used, the better these cards perform! The cards have a fine embossed texture, with a feel and handling unlike any other deck we've produced to date!

Custom Brick Boxes, FREE Limited White Decks

The Nautical Deck has been created in Red and Blue backs, as well as a limited-edition White version. In addition to being a different color, the White version of the deck has a different tuck box design and different designs for the Aces. Fewer than 2,000 White decks were produced, and we are giving away one free White deck with the purchase of every 12 Red or Blue decks through the end of the day on Monday, September 2nd. Get these white beauties for FREE before they are available later this year!

Purchases of 12 Red or 12 Blue decks also include a custom-printed brick box! Each deck features a custom sticker seal, and also includes a specially-designed gaff card. All Nautical purchasers will receive a FREE video download starring Alex Pandrea that teaches you how to perform with the gaff.

[bhong]

They've got a beautiful back design. Honestly, I'm looking the red and blue a lot more than the special limited white. I'm wishing companies would do a little bit more with the court cards since they go through all this trouble with custom ace of space, jokers, back and then the courts are a big let down.

[Card Player]

$6.95 for a deck made in China. Why don't I buy 24 decks of these crappy handling cards so I can get them cheaper. What a great idea.

Look at that amazing art. That's the best design of a ROPE I've ever seen. It must be that minimalist look everyone likes so much.

That's OK, some little boy or girl will get their parents to buy a few for them.

[Alex Willis]

They've got a beautiful back design. Honestly, I'm looking the red and blue a lot more than the special limited white. I'm wishing companies would do a little bit more with the court cards since they go through all this trouble with custom ace of space, jokers, back and then the courts are a big let down.

They did upgrade the courts, they made them unicolor and framed in rope.  woo fucking hoo.  I will agree, I love the blue back design, but the rest has me bored. 

[Don Boyer]

Now available at http://thebluecrown.com/playing-cards/nautical-playing-cards.html#prettyPhoto

I actually really dig the back design. Courts are a let down (wish they had a custom sailor theme..) and the aces are nothing too special. Price point for a single deck seems ridiculously high for a non USPCC deck, but at 12/24 decks the bulk discounts are pretty sweet. I lol'd at "you can buy a brick of red/blue now and we'll throw in a free white one (that will be available later this year!)"

You misread the quote.  They're offering the rare deck NOW with a 12-deck purchase, and in the future will make them available for sale.  Some would say, "BFD, I can buy it later," but it is a limited edition of less than 2,000.

Guys, I've handled these.  I'd say they're not as great as a Magic Finish deck, but they have a decent stock and a cool design - with a very subtle one-way back.  The gaff card's kinda nice, too - it's pretty unique.  Considering that they're pretty cheap compared to most custom decks, they're worth it as a magician's go-to deck, without a doubt.  Flourishers will find it needs a lot of breaking in and won't perform as slickly.  That's fine, too, really - if every deck handled exactly the same, there'd be less point in having different decks.

Not everyone will like them, but at least some of you should give them a chance.  These aren't 99-cent store decks by a longshot.  If you think the design is nice, pick some up and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

If nobody gives decks made outside of Erlanger, Kentucky, USA a chance, you'll hand a literal monopoly to the one company that practically dominates the market in the first place.  You'll never see anything else, because they'll have no incentive to innovate and nothing else of quality will be available - because no one gave anything else a chance.

[Fred]

Now available at http://thebluecrown.com/playing-cards/nautical-playing-cards.html#prettyPhoto

I actually really dig the back design. Courts are a let down (wish they had a custom sailor theme..) and the aces are nothing too special. Price point for a single deck seems ridiculously high for a non USPCC deck, but at 12/24 decks the bulk discounts are pretty sweet. I lol'd at "you can buy a brick of red/blue now and we'll throw in a free white one (that will be available later this year!)"

You misread the quote.  They're offering the rare deck NOW with a 12-deck purchase, and in the future will make them available for sale.  Some would say, "BFD, I can buy it later," but it is a limited edition of less than 2,000.

Guys, I've handled these.  I'd say they're not as great as a Magic Finish deck, but they have a decent stock and a cool design - with a very subtle one-way back.  The gaff card's kinda nice, too - it's pretty unique.  Considering that they're pretty cheap compared to most custom decks, they're worth it as a magician's go-to deck, without a doubt.  Flourishers will find it needs a lot of breaking in and won't perform as slickly.  That's fine, too, really - if every deck handled exactly the same, there'd be less point in having different decks.

Not everyone will like them, but at least some of you should give them a chance.  These aren't 99-cent store decks by a longshot.  If you think the design is nice, pick some up and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

If nobody gives decks made outside of Erlanger, Kentucky, USA a chance, you'll hand a literal monopoly to the one company that practically dominates the market in the first place.  You'll never see anything else, because they'll have no incentive to innovate and nothing else of quality will be available - because no one gave anything else a chance.

I did not misread the quote and you just typed out exactly what i meant. I find it funny that theyre trying to promote the sale when it will be available later on in the year individually. Maybe i didnt phrase it right.

On paper, The market for producing playing cards seems to be monopolistic competition. however given the history, trust and the sheer amount of orders USPCC takes, they are already a monopoly by a long shot. I am sure USPCC has a patent on their secret black glue and thus creating a legal barrier for other firms to get involved in the compeition as they can only innovate and come up with their own magic mix. There is little incentive for people to buy outside of USPCC and especially outside the US as quality is substaintially worse and prices are not competitive as the costs are rammed up by middle men and distributors. For future competition to arise there must be something ground breaking, not just something on-par. The USPCC has achieved so much economies of scale that their costs of production are incredibly low. This gives them more room to differentiate and capture more of the market (from 1$ bikes to 10$ custom kickstarter decks) and also allows them to perform price discrimination. This ofcourse creates inefficiency in the market however thats not going to change any time soon if ever.

Personally im going to wait for resellers as shipping to australia is batshit expensive. I plan on buyig 2 blue and 1 white.

[Card Player]

If nobody gives decks made outside of Erlanger, Kentucky, USA a chance, you'll hand a literal monopoly to the one company that practically dominates the market in the first place.  You'll never see anything else, because they'll have no incentive to innovate and nothing else of quality will be available - because no one gave anything else a chance.

You don't attempt to break up a monopoly just for the sake of it being a monopoly. If USPCC has become a "monopoly", it means that having cards made in Shanghai is about money and profit margins. It has not stopped other card companies from compeating in the playing card market. I'm happy we can finally see through what this is about, instead of the BS advertising of it being better quality cards. Does the producer set the retail price for a deck, yes. Is that retail price effected by the USPCC cost, Yes but more so the producer profit margin. When a deck is ordered to be made, the producer should have figured out the retail price before it is manufactured. Any good business does. If the numbers don't work for the business, you don't have the deck made. So Shanghai becomes an option for TBC. Obviously, TBC's $6.95 per Shanghai deck has nothing to do with quality or manufacturing costs. So that being the case, why do I care about USPCC being a monopoly when it makes no difference in what I'm paying per deck. I'd rather pay for the quality of USPCC.

If an industry wants to break up a monopoly, you build a better product. Period.

[Don Boyer]

If nobody gives decks made outside of Erlanger, Kentucky, USA a chance, you'll hand a literal monopoly to the one company that practically dominates the market in the first place.  You'll never see anything else, because they'll have no incentive to innovate and nothing else of quality will be available - because no one gave anything else a chance.

You don't attempt to break up a monopoly just for the sake of it being a monopoly. If USPCC has become a "monopoly", it means that having cards made in Shanghai is about money and profit margins. It has not stopped other card companies from compeating in the playing card market. I'm happy we can finally see through what this is about, instead of the BS advertising of it being better quality cards. Does the producer set the retail price for a deck, yes. Is that retail price effected by the USPCC cost, Yes but more so the producer profit margin. When a deck is ordered to be made, the producer should have figured out the retail price before it is manufactured. Any good business does. If the numbers don't work for the business, you don't have the deck made. So Shanghai becomes an option for TBC. Obviously, TBC's $6.95 per Shanghai deck has nothing to do with quality or manufacturing costs. So that being the case, why do I care about USPCC being a monopoly when it makes no difference in what I'm paying per deck. I'd rather pay for the quality of USPCC.

If an industry wants to break up a monopoly, you build a better product. Period.

But your entire statement is dependent on the Shanghai product specifically being deficient.  I never said it was deficient; I said there's some in the market to whom it would appeal more than others.  There's too many people who believe that if it didn't come from USPC, it's not worth buying, when nothing could be further from the truth.  As a result, they never buy anything other than USPC products.  They don't hold a monopoly on playing cards yet, but they certainly hold the lion's share - they're to playing cards what Microsoft is to operating systems.

[Card Player]

If nobody gives decks made outside of Erlanger, Kentucky, USA a chance, you'll hand a literal monopoly to the one company that practically dominates the market in the first place.  You'll never see anything else, because they'll have no incentive to innovate and nothing else of quality will be available - because no one gave anything else a chance.

You don't attempt to break up a monopoly just for the sake of it being a monopoly. If USPCC has become a "monopoly", it means that having cards made in Shanghai is about money and profit margins. It has not stopped other card companies from compeating in the playing card market. I'm happy we can finally see through what this is about, instead of the BS advertising of it being better quality cards. Does the producer set the retail price for a deck, yes. Is that retail price effected by the USPCC cost, Yes but more so the producer profit margin. When a deck is ordered to be made, the producer should have figured out the retail price before it is manufactured. Any good business does. If the numbers don't work for the business, you don't have the deck made. So Shanghai becomes an option for TBC. Obviously, TBC's $6.95 per Shanghai deck has nothing to do with quality or manufacturing costs. So that being the case, why do I care about USPCC being a monopoly when it makes no difference in what I'm paying per deck. I'd rather pay for the quality of USPCC.

If an industry wants to break up a monopoly, you build a better product. Period.

But your entire statement is dependent on the Shanghai product specifically being deficient.  I never said it was deficient; I said there's some in the market to whom it would appeal more than others.  There's too many people who believe that if it didn't come from USPC, it's not worth buying, when nothing could be further from the truth.  As a result, they never buy anything other than USPC products.  They don't hold a monopoly on playing cards yet, but they certainly hold the lion's share - they're to playing cards what Microsoft is to operating systems.

Deficiant? Is that what Conjuring Arts is calling Global Titan? Deficient is something not intended that compromises the quality of a product. Your right, they're not deficient. They're just not good handling decks as intended.

Microsoft's monopoly was much different. 90% of the computing world was/is using Windows. Microsoft was eliminating software companies from competing because free applications were being included in Windows like MS Explorer. Even the government tried to get involved. It was only until products like Apple iPhone (Safari, Apple Mobile OS) and Google Chrome that people don't see Microsoft as much of a monopoly anymore. Better products loosened the grasp of the Microsoft monopoly.

USPCC is not giving away free items to "effectively" eliminate other card companies from competing. I bought Global Titan. Nothing USPCC is doing stopped me from buying it. Only the Shanghai manufacture's quality did that. This is a producer issue, not the retail customer. The few companies using Shanghai need to stop making their issue look like it should be our issue. All we (retail customers) want are quality products.

[Don Boyer]

Look, just keep an open mind is all I'm saying.  They're not my cards, I don't sell them, I don't own a share of jacksquat.

[Card Player]

Look, just keep an open mind is all I'm saying.  They're not my cards, I don't sell them, I don't own a share of jacksquat.

I think you just named something for me. Thanks

I will make sure you own a "jacksquat".

[MrMollusk]

crappy handling

Made in china = crappy handling.

Dat logic.

Nice job on making a judgement call on the handling before you even have them in your hands, by the way. The Legends deck and Virtuoso decks are some of the best handling decks I own. Neither manufactured in the U.S.

If you're going to stigmatize something, stigmatize it for a reason, not because you think that a product blows if it's not made by a certain company.

The design isn't as good as say, the Carpathia deck, but it's far from the worst. It would be an awesome deck to bring to the beach or something.

[Don Boyer]

crappy handling

Made in china = crappy handling.

Dat logic.

Nice job on making a judgement call on the handling before you even have them in your hands, by the way. The Legends deck and Virtuoso decks are some of the best handling decks I own. Neither manufactured in the U.S.

If you're going to stigmatize something, stigmatize it for a reason, not because you think that a product blows if it's not made by a certain company.

The design isn't as good as say, the Carpathia deck, but it's far from the worst. It would be an awesome deck to bring to the beach or something.

He's making the judgment call based on the handling of another deck from the same factory, Global Titans.  It's akin to comparing two USPC decks - sometimes they're the same, sometimes they aren't...

[john]

The Legends deck and Virtuoso decks are some of the best handling decks I own. Neither manufactured in the U.S.

Legends are without a doubt made outside of the US, virts are though...

[Fred]

Legends: Allegedly same printer as fatboyeatallday. Virtuoso= USPCC.

[MrMollusk]

The Legends deck and Virtuoso decks are some of the best handling decks I own. Neither manufactured in the U.S.

Legends are without a doubt made outside of the US, virts are though...

Whoops. My bad. I meant the Fatboy deck. Very similar back designs.

crappy handling

Made in china = crappy handling.

Dat logic.

Nice job on making a judgement call on the handling before you even have them in your hands, by the way. The Legends deck and Virtuoso decks are some of the best handling decks I own. Neither manufactured in the U.S.

If you're going to stigmatize something, stigmatize it for a reason, not because you think that a product blows if it's not made by a certain company.

The design isn't as good as say, the Carpathia deck, but it's far from the worst. It would be an awesome deck to bring to the beach or something.

He's making the judgment call based on the handling of another deck from the same factory, Global Titans.  It's akin to comparing two USPC decks - sometimes they're the same, sometimes they aren't...

Huh. I thought they were both just made in shanghai. I haven't bought the Global Titan's deck, so I can't speak for the handling.

[xela]

Woah, I have to say, the colored version of that deck is pretty sexy. I wasn't a fan of the Crown Deck at all, and the NOC decks were a joke. This is really good, though. I'd say TBC is definitely a fierce competitor with E and T11 at this point.

[Card Player]

crappy handling

Made in china = crappy handling.

Dat logic.

Nice job on making a judgement call on the handling before you even have them in your hands, by the way. The Legends deck and Virtuoso decks are some of the best handling decks I own. Neither manufactured in the U.S.

If you're going to stigmatize something, stigmatize it for a reason, not because you think that a product blows if it's not made by a certain company.

The design isn't as good as say, the Carpathia deck, but it's far from the worst. It would be an awesome deck to bring to the beach or something.

@ MrMollusk: I already bought the Global Titan decks from Shanghai. Its NOT made in China = Crappy Handling, although most decks made in China and ALL I've handled do handle like crap. Alex does the pictures for CARC and most likely this Nautical deck is the same Shanghai manufacture that CARC used. Unless you tried the Global Titan you would know what I'm talking about.

I own Legends. Those are made in Taiwan. Not Shanghai. That Taiwan manufacture has built a good reputation. It makes me wonder if producers of Shanghai decks are "unintentionally" taking advantage of those who don't know there geography and think this is the same manufacture who made Legends and Moth.

The Virtuoso Deck was made by the United States Playing Card Company and distributed by Full Boat Dealer in Ohio.

(sorry for repeating what everyone else said)

sometimes they're the same, sometimes they aren't...

@ Don: True, the quality might be slightly different on this deck. Like USPCC decks are slightly different one deck to another. My hesitation comes from the initial advertising of the Global Titan and then an Epic Fail once I got the decks in my hands. If CARC did not make the Global Titan out to be the next best thing since sliced bread, I think I would be more open minded. I feel a bit deceived trying anything from Shanghai now.

[Rob Wright]

I have no knowledge of how both the Global Titan and Nautical Decks work, but I am sure they are fine for your average Saturday night poker game.
I see Anonymous' point here. You have CARC and Blue Crown that gear their cards towards magicians & cardist. If they make an unusable deck. Then they loose trust, and the very people they are trying to sell to quit buying. He doesn't want to buy this deck because of the Titans.