You somewhat got it, apart from that Jay's only investment was making the video, and that he wouldn't have been making money from it. We gave him this opportunity but the decks would have been more expensive and he said to be okay with making nothing more than the decks, as generous as he is.

May I mention that these e-mails are for correspondence with customers only and are not to be made public, nor is this allowed as written in the Terms and Conditions of Use and by law.. but well.. (I thought, let me mention it, because I have witnessed things getting really out of hand with another company when a private mail was shared and taken from another perspective than the consumer's one).


To clear up something, generating sales for the Compass 822 decks was not our task. We were told to easily sell more than enough decks, even if they would have been much more expensive than they are now. This, however, did obviously not happen and since our original, earlier-approved back-up plan eventually got rejected too, things were made really difficult for us. Of course we regret this and we are sorry for getting many others involved. We now are forced to do work that was not part of any deal to begin with, nor does any of us get paid for it, but we do it because we would like to have those decks produced, to send to those who ordered them.


Since the beginning, there has been some sort of misunderstanding that we would be making money over Jay (mismag) his back, but this is not true at all (as mentioned and explained on our site too). The only one who is making profit when enough decks would be sold, is Jay himself. The only parties that would get paid are the USPC, the postal services and Daniël, our transportation manager who'd get a minimum wage for shipping out all decks once these would be produced.


As for our company, half of the people get what we are doing, the other half does not, but there is no one who's thoughts didn't get triggered when seeing the decks we sell and the related prices (of the Miracles in particular). Yes, there is definitely reverse-psychology involved (also as mentioned). We do, however, not use it as "a backdoor to crack into the same market", we do honestly mean to make people think about the overly-commercialized world of playing cards, and to have them think twice (preferably more) before buying tons of cards or starting to collect decks that often aren't worth anything, just for the sake of collecting them. Once people have thought about that, they can do and buy whatever they want, and our mission would be succeeded.


Also, we do have some more average projects coming your way. At the biggest one of these, the decks will probably cost no more than $5.99 (maybe and hopefully a buck less too). This wasn't possible with the Compass 822 decks due to the high requirements we got, but yeah, I suppose that it gets time to show we aren't only the crazy group of people many of you think we are. 

Those who have watched my magic videos probably know the following word. For those who haven't: Hey! Nice to meet you. I am Mark a.k.a. Mystery Mark.


I'm a professional entertainer and producer in the arts of music and magic, as well as a designer, YouTube expert, upcoming filmmaker and other things I really don't have time for (if anyone wants and is capable of being my twin brother, let me know. I need you!). Anyhow, I'm here because as some of you know, I recently started to take on a profession in the field of playing cards, and at this board there are people who seem really interested in that.


A little summary
In April, I've had a very successful prank regarding so called New Jerry's (http://newjerrys.com). Believe it or not, there were a whole lot of people that actually fell for it, and a bit too many to be good so I figured something had to be done about the overly commercialized world of playing cards and I started the Art Fighters Playing Card Company (which really didn't take off yet but we got something on the way that will certainly take off... which funny enough isn't one of our own productions). I got laughed and cursed at by some of you (no worries, I suppose I can forgive those who called me really bad things. What a crazy magician I must be for thinking I could walk into the world of playing cards thinking I'm an expert). And I know those same people may not be appreciating the following, but I recently started doing playing card reviews too, as DarkReviewZ (based on DarkSleightZ, which is the name of my magic company) with a unique format called the GMFDC.


Hereby the link to the playing card reviews: http://youtube.com/cards (indeed, I couldn't think of a username that would suit it better)
And for magic: http://youtube.com/MarkHilkemeijer (it may be my name but it's a company channel with more artists)


Cheers!


-Mark

Quote from: Mystery on December 16, 2011, 06:44:14 AM

Yeah, just from the DB merchandise. Don't know if any of my decks will be signed though, but I got a whole lot of signatures of David Blaine anyways, and I couldn't care less about that.

You cant buy the Red "White Lions" or the Rainbow Deck from David's website.  These 2 rare decks only come with the bottle unless you buy just the decks from the secondary market  You can only purchase the Blue "White Lions" which are signed by David on his website.

I never said I purchased them though. I'm getting them as a gift to my order of regular blue ones. A couple of years ago I got a box of Split Spades used by DB as gift from them too, so guess I'm just lucky.

I suppose the ones who got or are getting them ordered them just for the extra decks? Or do you guys really care about the bottle too?
I am getting just the decks sent to me and I didn't spent nearby as much, nor would I. But fair enough, I did buy a whole lot of decks from them in the past so I suppose I actually paid for these extra decks in advance.

True, but from I remember it's because of the overall browser support (WebKit with Safari being only part of that) that Firefox finally chose to not support the CSS. It did work in FF on and off. But yeah, the feature was made by and for IE, and of course they probably hoped to set a new standard but I suppose other browsers started to get tired of them coming up with new, non-standard features. 


If done like this, it's a major win: http://www.upenn.edu/curf/fellowships/fellowships-directory , but to do that in CSS wouldn't be very solid anyways. Thank God for Javascript and the jQuery kit (although I never used the latter one, but that's just me).

I agree as well. I personally break in and test decks in detail, and in case I have two of them I use the new one just for in the video review to show what the deck actually looks like, rather than me showing an old and dirty due to usage-looking deck. But out-of-the-box reviews cannot be trusted as for decks' handlings.

I already gave up posting as well (even though Alex said anyone is free to post what they want in here), but I now do have a question for Issuxark. Before Issuxark started posting, there was a time that this thread was called "Art Fighters Playing Card Company - STAY AWAY FROM THEM". Yes, this was corrected later on and I do thank CBJ for that, but it was at that time I called libel on it (you can still see it on the second page). That he changed it says enough to me, but how did that actually qualify for "close to libel" and not actual libel, apart from hard evidence of it damaging us?

Thanks.

CBJ, for someone who laughed when I said you made yourself guilty of libel, you should be ashamed of yourself for 1) going around telling people to stay away from our company and 2) even putting it in capital letters in the title of this thread. That, Sir, is libel.

As said on UC, you go around "warning people" based on something you don't understand, disagree with or find fishy, forgetting that you are dealing with a company selling and sending out products for more than five years (hell, we even sold decks in the past, just not our own, and there are YouTube videos to back that up too). That you personally don't trust us, fine, but that you go around telling others to not trust us based on your own, distorted feelings is not. A big factor of libel is whether it is the truth or not, because if it is, it would be a valid warning instead. But in your case it is not and you have nothing to rely on either, and thus what you are doing here is prohibited by law and should be taken care of.

Now, you have stated that you 'don't need to worry about losing the value of the deck by opening it'  No, you don't; because there is no resale value and that's the problem with your whole system.  If I buy a sealed Jerry's deck, I can still open them, use them until I'm done with them and resell for a portion of what was originally paid.  They may cost $250 but I can get some of the back.  Same with any limited/rare deck.  With your deck, I can't sell them after use, I just get a new version of the deck back.  No resell value.  Where does the resale value go?  You destroy it upon returning the deck; what a pointless waste.  I mean, given the option, who the hell would take your back-to-sealed offer up if they could just buy the cards outright?  It costs you exactly the same money to do that; your business plan is insane.

You are missing the fact that there is a price to the plan you paid. You could still resell the deck like any other deck of cards as there are still only five on the market at most. You don't actually have to use the policy either.

Also, your political message in regards to the deck seems to me to be magicians just being so fucking precious about 'the magic'.

Seems like you understood it correctly then. We can't be blamed for the fact you don't care as much about the art as we do though.

I think this is going to be a long post, but it seems that apart from our own community, no one on the internet actually gets what we are doing at the AFPCC.

I'll do my very best to get back to everything that needs to be cleared up in this thread. Reason is that a couple of you guys even e-mailed us and started yelling about how we are nuts and don't know how to do business. Oh, the internet and the joy it brings.

Let's begin with replying to some quotes:

Any company that feels the need to post these Q&As BEFORE the decks even go on sale, already knows that their price point is WAYYY to high.

The Q&A was not exactly made beforehand. We have had a website (not yet a card company) for the past 2-3 years with our concept on there. In those years a lot of questions have been asked. The FAQ actually gives full transparancy, which I understand is pretty odd for any company but so be it. I personally think not a bad word could be said about that.

I saw in the site you gave that miracle deck are made in Germany.
So, it won't be a good decks as uspcc decks.

I wouldn't say they are superior (although the stock and finish have been fully customized to my needs and wants so for me it would actually be), but they are definitely not worse than USPCC cards. Seems like a myth that needs to be cleared up.

From my experience USPCC ships anywhere in the world for free if you print cards with them.

They do not, and even if they would, there still is a lot of customs clearance added to the decks.

I think one of the card decks this is subliminally telling you is that it's like the smoke and mirrors. There is an S and M on the deck and believe it or not that was my first thoughts of this deck. And when you think smoke and mirrors you think awsomeness. Subliminal sales tactic perhaps?

The subliminal messages we meant are the ones that show the card industry went a little gaga such as the prices. Nonetheless, it is really fun that you noticed it because yes, indeed, the S and M symbols do have some subliminal meanings such as street magic and smoke and mirrors (don't forget smoke and mirrors aren't only the playing cards by D&D).

The hilarious part is that if you select the option for "envelope" that fits up to eight decks, they still charge you more money for every additional deck you want over one.

Alex, I honestly am a little disgusted by the way you are talking about our business. I would not talk about your business like that either. In reply to the quote, I am pretty sure that in every country on this globe, shipping costs are relying on weight and not just on packaging. One or two decks weigh much less than seven or eight decks, so obviously the shipping will be more expensive for the latter ones. Still, we are not joking if we say we kept the prices as low as legally possible. We break even on it.

Now, for the rest of things that need to be cleared up:

Miracles playing cards were not actually supposed to be marketed. We made ourselves a lifelong stock and we merely sell some just to make a point on how prices of playing cards went on a loose the past few years. The prices of the Miracles (and of the Miracles only) work exactly the same as the prices of Jerry's Nuggets, Ghost 1st Editions, Smoke & Mirrors, Gold Arcanes, and such cards. Yet, there are thousands of those decks on the market, and only five decks of original Miracles.

But we are not crazy. Of course we expected a flood of people that would actually fall over the prices, which is why we announced a much more affordable version of the deck that will be printed at the USPCC next year. And we won't release all colors at once, don't worry about that. It will be just one at a time.

The original Miracles come with a lot of very original extras though. Sure there are people that are willing to buy a deck of $250 or $500 just because of those. We, however, do not expect to sell the more expensive ones. Those five decks are not supposed to be sold out at anytime.

I hope that clears things up a little.

-Mark