Cartamundi buys USPCC.

[skinny]

From the source -- https://cartamundi.com/en/press/cartamundi-acquire-united-states-playing-card-company/

I hope USPCC remains an independent entity or subsidiary as it has under Newell and Jarden, both catch-all household conglomerates. Even though the US manufacturing facilities probably won't be affected at all, I still don't know what I'd think of USPCC headquarters in Belgium. It was tough enough getting used to Kentucky.

If USPCC does adopt the Cartamundi name, imagine the Kickstarter projects --
"Totally Awesome New Cards printed by Cartamundi (USA factory)"

[Lee Asher]

We are witnesing playing card history in the making. 

[Chuqii]

First they came for our beer (AB InBev), then they came for our playing cards.  Feels like a plan. 

[Worst Bower]

This is huge news. Cartamundi now controls most of the world's major card manufacturing companies. Yes, Cartamundi will keep the USPCC name like they do for all their acquired subsidiaries. They bought it for the brand value too. Just expect a Cartamundi logo next to the USPCC one somewhere on the box.

[Don Boyer]

This is huge news. Cartamundi now controls most of the world's major card manufacturing companies. Yes, Cartamundi will keep the USPCC name like they do for all their acquired subsidiaries. They bought it for the brand value too. Just expect a Cartamundi logo next to the USPCC one somewhere on the box.

While that may be true about the branding, I wonder if it will be true about the manufacturing.  Will they keep the Erlanger plant open or will they centralize the manufacturing elsewhere, perhaps even in Belgium?  To my knowledge, they have a few US locations but only one, in Dallas, does any kind of card printing - the others are used for stuff like sales or manufacture of board games.  To their credit, the Dallas plant does make custom collectible cards for games such as Magic: the Gathering, and for that they do pretty decent quality work (they used to make them all in Belgium, but now Belgium only makes the M:tG international editions).  But with so much playing card work being done in Belgium, perhaps they'll find it more efficient to simply make everything from there and ship it over.

[Wild Joker]

I was really, really hoping this was some kind of April Fool's joke, but I can't believe this is for real! I don't even know what to think of this, but this sounds like such a downgrade, if you ask me. I know a lot of people have been saying USPC's cards have been going down in quality ever since they moved to Erlanger . . . this seems like they would be going down in quality even more since Cartamundi's stuff tends to be really cheap . . . even their US cards have rather flimsy stock that wear out quickly.

I'm just . . . disappointed in this news.

[Don Boyer]

I was really, really hoping this was some kind of April Fool's joke, but I can't believe this is for real! I don't even know what to think of this, but this sounds like such a downgrade, if you ask me. I know a lot of people have been saying USPC's cards have been going down in quality ever since they moved to Erlanger . . . this seems like they would be going down in quality even more since Cartamundi's stuff tends to be really cheap . . . even their US cards have rather flimsy stock that wear out quickly.

I'm just . . . disappointed in this news.

I would have agreed with you at one point in recent history, but not today.  While Cartamundi does put out some very low-end decks, in the past few years they've done a lot to court the collectors'/enthusiasts' market by upgrading their stocks.  I daresay that in some ways, they exceed USPC.

Some of the cheapest decks I've seen produced in recent history by USPC were produced as licensed properties, created for third parties to their specs, even if their specs were on the cheap side - all the licensor cared about was using the name to push the product, not the quality of the product itself being the selling point.  What Cartamundi is doing today for the collectors' market is far superior.  I'm only curious about whether they're going to expand or contract in terms of card production being done directly in the US.  While the greatest value of USPC is probably their long-standing brands, I can't imagine their physical plant is something that would easily be written off.