On Demand Production That's Not In China?

[variantventures]

I'm having a little trouble finding this information.  I am trying to find an on-demand card-printing service that doesn't produce their cards in China.  Taiwan is okay, Hong Kong is not.

Thanks for your assistance.

[Don Boyer]

I'm having a little trouble finding this information.  I am trying to find an on-demand card-printing service that doesn't produce their cards in China.  Taiwan is okay, Hong Kong is not.

Thanks for your assistance.

That's a pretty tall order.  The only one's I know of are in mainland China.  You could try Liberty Playing Cards, but I don't think they're set up for on-demand.

The thing about on-demand is that they typically use a digital printing press.  The quality's not as high, but the size of a print run can be as little as a single deck.  Any time you're talking about printing plates/offset printing like what USPC does for their retail decks, then you're talking serious money and larger print runs, measured in the low thousands at the least.  With both, the fewer the decks made, the higher the per-deck cost.

I know a lot of designers, not willing to pay the several hundred dollars that many companies will charge for a prototype deck, who instead opt to use MakePlayingCards.com (MPC).  They have improved the quality of their work significantly.  But they're printing from a facility in mainland China on a digital press.  It's hard to beat their pricing for small print runs - I've seen successful Kickstarters done as pet projects that were funded on as little as a thousand dollars by using MPC as the printer.  The artist just wanted to get their deck made and didn't care if the print run was in the dozens instead of in the thousands.

[variantventures]

Yeah, that's what my research found.  I was hoping folks here would know about some gem that I'd missed.  That's a pity.

[Don Boyer]

Yeah, that's what my research found.  I was hoping folks here would know about some gem that I'd missed.  That's a pity.

It's the global economy, man... 

The simple fact is that for what it would cost to buy and staff a digital press in the US (never mind an offset press, with actual printing plates), the per-deck cost gets prohibitively high, requiring the printer to demand print runs with minimum size requirements.  It's only recently that USPC lowered their minimum print run size to 1,000 decks - it used to be 2,500 and before that it was 5,000!  The last time I checked, they wanted something like $500 for a prototype deck, and I believe they use a digital press for prototyping - the cost of making printing plates is just too high.  Wages aren't quite so high in China, so they can man a press a lot more cheaply, but often, unless you really luck out and find a conscientious printer, the quality isn't very high for the decks they export, especially if they're using domestic paper - the good presses import their stock, usually from somewhere in Europe, like perhaps Germany.

MPC does cater to the collector market for their print work and as such they're really raised the bar.  They're not the best game in town, but if you're working on a budget, they're pretty darn good for the price.  I don't know of a single American printer that's willing to take print runs that are as small or at the same price point.  When it comes to the US market, there's really just a few players out there for playing cards - USPC owns at least 90% of the market.  The lion's share of what's left is held by Gaming Partner International, which had acquired Paulson and Gemaco, two major players in the casino cards market - but as of May this year, that company is now owned by one of my favorite manufacturers, Angel Holdings Godo Kaisha, better known as Angel Playing Cards, based in Kyoto, Japan.

Actually, when you factor in that Cartamundi, based in Turnhout, Belgium, is completing their acquisition of USPC from Newell Brands before the year is over, that will mean that nearly the entire US market for playing cards will be foreign-owned...we're talking somewhere in the ballpark of 99% or more!  The only printer I know of that's in the US and still US-owned and operated would be Liberty Playing Cards in the Dallas area - they're owned by the guys behind Gambler's Warehouse.