The jokers need a little help, but otherwise it's not a bad deck!
The jokers are my favorite part! LOL
Now what you should do it, now that you know exactly what it costs to make, is prep a Kickstarter project to get the deck made in larger numbers (not necessarily mass-produced) for people who'd be interested in playing with them. I know there are some websites that talk about games and have lively discussions about the many different non-standard decks out there, including decks with more than four suits and more than two colors. You could have the playing-card equivalent of the next Pet Rock or Rubik's Cube on your hands!
There won't be a Kickstarter. I don't think they are original enough and I didn't design them from scratch, even though they are a free, as in beer, licence. The time commitment versus the reward is very minimal, and not being based in America would make things even more difficult. And there's nothing to stop some of the big name designers from putting on different suits to the cards they already have and corner the market with something better. Imagine if Kings Wild or on of the other big names came out with a 5+ suit deck. I hope they do. They win, and they should.
Crowns don't feel like they mesh with the rest of the suits, try make it into one contiguous piece with maybe just three points. You'll probably need new courts for your new suits. Ask sprout to get you in touch with Vivian. She designed some courts for him that look like Charles Goodall himself made it. Anglo-Rouennais knights!
As for games, the only ones that I know of that are played with 8 suits is Ganjifa. It's a very old trick-taking game from Iran and India that supposedly requires lots of memory and concentration.
The reasoning behind the crowns, was just to stay within the traditional theme, or at least try. Through some research, I read/found out that the suits tended to have these meanings:
hearts: clergy (love, death)
diamonds: merchants (money, business)
clubs: peasants (common people)
spades: nobility (elite, upper class)
That is why I matched:
hearts with crosses
diamonds with coins
clubs with stars (a little bit of a stretch, but it was simple and easy to identify)
spades with crowns
I would often play eight player games either, and I anticipate only using up to 6 different suits usually. The games I often play are:
asshole (a four player only game)
hearts (a four player only game)
The problem is when you have 5 or 6 players and using a traditional deck. Now, if the situation comes around again and I want to play one of these games with 5 or 6 people, I can add the 1 or 2 suits to the deck and the game stays the same with the same number of cards etc.
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