New Deck? - D&D Chinatown?

[zaganh]

what happened to the shipping i was gonna order but the shipping went from 14 to 45. im not paying that much, zag you wanna sell me some of yours?

i proberbly will when i get them ^^ let me know when your other decks arrive if i sell you some ill give you a little discount i hope your doing well =)

[KPopFever605]

I might pick these up...eventually. These would be great if I could get them for a CNY festival at the end of the week, but without express, I doubt that will happen. Limited to 5000 - they always say that. Even T11'S products have more sell out rate. Ha!

[zaganh]

look how much shi[pping was for me

Fulton's Chinatown CHINATOWN 25 $222.00

Subtotal                    [/t][/t]  $222.00                        Shipping & Handling                    [/t]  $13.00                        Discount (12+ Decks - 15% Off)                    [/t]  -$33.30                        Tax            [/t] $0.00    Gift Card (z)    [/t] -$50.00    Gift Card (z)    [/t] -$50.00    Gift Card (z)    [/t] -$50.00    Gift Card (z)    [/t] -$50.00    Store Credit    [/t] -$1.70    Grand Total [/t]  $0.00    Bucks Earned[/t] 9 Bucks

How did you get so many gift cards and why would you use them all on these cards? Why not save them for future releases?

i can only buy in fiftys as i only use paypal to pay so i payed for 4 gift cards i was going to get 16 china decks and 6 plaid but i love the desighn and saw shipping was low so i got 2 bricks and one deck to use i was going to leave 1 brick sealed and open 1 and give my fiance a deck or more i mostly admire decks i have alot of decks and i only ever use the same v6 i had since they came out and she will just use that 1 deck for card games so i was going to leave them sitting on my shelf untouched for quite a while but they dont come in a custom brick box wich i find highly strange im really anoyed theres no custom brick box so ill have to open two of my variety boxes and fill them with them i wanted to buy an empty variety box but i would of had to spend another 50 it really anoying if im a cent over 50 i have to spend another 50 when theres another realease ill have to buy more gift cards how ever many i think need

this release is rather strange first showing the box only mostly then no custom brick box and the price 8 88 the shipping changing any way another beautifull set of cards to add to the colection i feel im left confused haha

when will these ship it took ages for the fultons how fast did the plaid come after they were released ?

[zaganh]

i asked brad fulton why theres no brick box and he said ( @zaganh @bucktwins good question. Sad but true . We designed one. The limited size print run of this deck wouldn't allow us to print it. @zaganh @bucktwins I'm more upset than you about it but it is out of our hands. We all wanted it. The realities of printing business.)

it sounds like these are really limited they wouldnt of sent such beautifull cards in a white plain brick box for no reason it maybe it exsplains the price too

[Masque]

Hey, look at that custom… face.


A Chinese theme with French court cards.  C'mon, guys….

[moonexe]

A Chinese theme with French court cards.  C'mon, guys….

This.
The deck looks nice, the box is awesome, but it lacks customization on the faces and it's really overpriced. Limited? Cool story. Maybe next time.

[Aaron]

Didnt get any, Im not a huge fan of them and I am running low on funds to buy decks     so I have only been buying deks I really like lately, also I don`t like how many decks D&D have been releasing lately that are "Limited"

[Don Boyer]

I got 6 decks and my dad got 6 too
I wish I could get more because only 5000 of them
Also, $8.88 is because 8 is good luck
And there are a lot of people not being able to checkout because of a shipping problem

So - you got your dad hooked on custom decks!  Good job!

I like the box and the back, the Ace of Spades is cool - but I'm still annoyed at the minimal customization beyond that.  I only ordered three, period.

Didnt get any, Im not a huge fan of them and I am running low on funds to buy decks     so I have only been buying deks I really like lately, also I don`t like how many decks D&D have been releasing lately that are "Limited"

Dude - EVERY SINGLE DECK they ever made is a "limited edition" deck.  It seems only E is not going crazy with the limited issues all the time.  It feels nice to know that a year from now I'll still be able to buy 1800's or Infinity decks.  At least this time, the Bucks actually released the amount of decks printed - I believe this is a first for them.  In the past, they've been evasive or vague, never a precise number.

i asked brad fulton why theres no brick box and he said ( @zaganh @bucktwins good question. Sad but true . We designed one. The limited size print run of this deck wouldn't allow us to print it. @zaganh @bucktwins I'm more upset than you about it but it is out of our hands. We all wanted it. The realities of printing business.)

it sounds like these are really limited they wouldnt of sent such beautifull cards in a white plain brick box for no reason it maybe it exsplains the price too

So, to reverse engineer that statement - they made MORE THAN 5,000 DECKS of S&M v6, Fulton's Clip Joint and the Vintage Plaids!  If 5K wasn't enough for custom brick boxes, perhaps 10K was...  Either that or Fulton's tweet is off-base.  But it does tell us just how "rare" some of these decks really are.

Fantastique didn't have a custom brick box, and it's sold out, finally - on the market since Halloween.  I'm guessing it had a short print run, but maybe not as short as the Chinatown deck.  It was certainly shorter than the decks I mentioned above that got the custom bricks.

[zaganh]

they also said why there not more chinese customization in the deck on there facebook

Dan and Dave Andrej: You bring up a good point in regard to "Chinese Designs" on alternate cards. I chose not to go that route for good reason. These cards celebrate Chinatown and my love of the Chinese New Year as an American within a genre. They are not an expression of beautiful Chinese History etc (which i love and respect) but rather my personal journey of a very special place, and "state of mind" (as Robert Towne might say...).
 Hope that explains my design route and I appreciate you bringing that up actually.
 -Fulton.

[Don Boyer]

they also said why there not more chinese customization in the deck on there facebook

Dan and Dave Andrej: You bring up a good point in regard to "Chinese Designs" on alternate cards. I chose not to go that route for good reason. These cards celebrate Chinatown and my love of the Chinese New Year as an American within a genre. They are not an expression of beautiful Chinese History etc (which i love and respect) but rather my personal journey of a very special place, and "state of mind" (as Robert Towne might say...).
 Hope that explains my design route and I appreciate you bringing that up actually.
 -Fulton.

That doesn't sound like a terribly strong argument to me.  No one said he had to bring up thousands of years of Chinese history in order to make a deck based on a part of LA that's been in existence for less than a century.  He could have gone the extra step, really got into the place, taken cues from iconic landmarks and popular shops, from the garments worn by the residents, from damn near anything having some significance to Chinatown, LA.

Instead, he made a deck back that looks like the back of a Chinese menu and exactly three custom cards (including both IDENTICAL jokers) besides the ad/gaff cards.  Flashes of gold in the red suits, the bare minimum, would have made this deck more visually interesting and required ZERO experience of Chinese culture beyond what he already displayed in the deck box and card back designs.

It was lazy design, in my opinion.  What he did, he did well, but he didn't do much of it.  He names the deck after a part of LA that he loves, but shows little research behind it other than what he's seen first hand since childhood during the Chinese New Year celebrations.  He indulges in his childhood reverie, we get a near-totally boring, practically uncustomized deck as a result.  Super.

Would it have been so hard to, for example, find out what the Chinese character is for luck and include it in gold inside just ONE of the red pips on each red-suit card?  (Hell, maybe even in one black pip on the black-suit cards as well.)  It would have so perfectly gelled with the Fulton's design without being a straight imitation/recoloration.

I'm losing interest in D&D's cards more and more by the day.

[TigerKnee]

I'm a bit annoyed by the hike in price.  $8.88?  Come on now.  This hobby is starting to get a little ridiculous.

[Paul Carpenter]

Say it with me everyone! Meeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhh. (I'm going to go off on my personal-rant again, the same one from like 2 weeks ago when the vintage plaid were released. At this rate D&D will release about 25 decks this year.)

As people have said, a nice back but everything else as standard as you can get. Boring boring boring unimaginative boring lazy. Sorry, D&D are putting out a LOT of cards because they know people will buy. I really feel that if they were first and foremost concerned with the art of playing cards they would be doing a little more exploration of new ideas. Since they have designed many decks already, they have all the design files for these decks. All they are doing is art for the 3-4 cards. Everything else is done, minus the slightest of tweaking. Conceivably in a few days you could have a "new amazing deck" that you shoot off to USPCC and get priority printing for.

And the price, plus shipping is just too high. $14 for one deck! Compare to the fully customized labors of love like Vortex or my Tendril deck, which on Kickstarter if you subtract shipping are like $5-6. I just don't see the value proposition on the China cards. "8.88" is conveniently on their theme and also nicely hikes profit for the gold and embossing....

I guess what I want to say is I hope collectors can support the independent folks that are trying the new things, as it's quite clear that (perhaps with the exception of some Ellusionist work) the big guys are content to pump out deck after deck of nice, but lazy, work.

[chdmagicdude]

i got 5 decks and a uncut sheet

[dmbaggs]

After giving it a day to think about it, I'm not the biggest fan of this deck but I do like certain aspects to it. I like the backs and the box and the AoS. Those are all great aspects but the rest is sort of boring. It's not awful it's just not great. I would have liked to see all custom work but that just didn't happen. Another part of me likes that this has that classic feel to it with the standard (Recolored) courts. Sure it may be"lazy" but I do think it looks uniform/snazzy.


It may sound like I'm contradicting myself. I'm not crazy about the rest of the card but I do like the classy look it has with the gold and red color scheme. I would have loved all custom stuff but that wasn't going to happen.


Overall I'm not a huge fan of the deck. Will I pick it up? ....yeah probably, but only one or two decks. I want it for the connection it has to the FCJs.

[Masque]

...I like the backs and the box and the AoS.

Yeah. I like the custom parts of custom decks, too. I look forward to D&D budgeting for a full deck… though when they're already charging $9 for a deck, and almost enough in shipping that I'd expect *that* to be done in a custom metallic-ink box, I hate to think of how much such a deck would cost.

[Evan]

...I like the backs and the box and the AoS.

Yeah. I like the custom parts of custom decks, too. I look forward to D&D budgeting for a full deck… though when they're already charging $9 for a deck, and almost enough in shipping that I'd expect *that* to be done in a custom metallic-ink box, I hate to think of how much such a deck would cost.

Well the price was because 8 is a lucky number in chinese culture.

[Siegismyname]

Sometimes I don't think too much customization of a deck is good. Think of it this way. The only difference between our standard bikes, tallys and bees are the jokers, backs and AoS. So most of us perform with these cards and no one suspects a thing. So if we were to follow these tradition and only customize these 3 aspects of the deck, it would be great for performers. Sure it cost 8 times more for these as compared to the standard bees, bikes or tallys. But these are a limited run. Too much customization of a deck might cause the suspicion of the spectator but in the eyes of artist and collectors they are more awesome. It all comes down to what you are more of, a collector, artist or performer.

As a Chinese, I reckon this deck very suitable for the chinese new year occasion. The standard court cards and pips would also be suitable for use when we get together and gamble. I would definetly pick up one or two.

[dmbaggs]

...I like the backs and the box and the AoS.

Yeah. I like the custom parts of custom decks, too. I look forward to D&D budgeting for a full deck… though when they're already charging $9 for a deck, and almost enough in shipping that I'd expect *that* to be done in a custom metallic-ink box, I hate to think of how much such a deck would cost.

haha well played @masque. Although I'm not a fan of the jokers so I don't like all the custom parts. The rest looks good though.


@magicaddictz we understand why it's priced that high, but it still seems ridiculous. Next thing you know there's gonna be decks inspired by events in 1999 and they'll charge $19.99 for it. It's a silly way to price a deck, in my opinion.

[Evan]

@magicaddictz we understand why it's priced that high, but it still seems ridiculous. Next thing you know there's gonna be decks inspired by events in 1999 and they'll charge $19.99 for it. It's a silly way to price a deck, in my opinion.

But it does go with the theme! And the price is high but its nothing ridiculous. $19.99 would be crazy by $8.88 isn't horrible

[Masque]

And the price is high but its nothing ridiculous. $19.99 would be crazy by $8.88 isn't horrible

Remember that not everyone buys a brick at a time. What if you only want one deck?

I am not suggesting that the deck is overpriced. I am suggesting that the true cost of one deck is not $8.88, and their choice to handle fulfillment in-house means it's actually cheaper for me to buy things from individuals, who use full-retail-price services from FedEx or USPS or UPS, than it is to buy things straight from this company whose entire business comes from shipping products.

You can build your profit into your product's price, or you can build it into the bundled services that your product requires.  In either case, the total is higher than either one, and this should not be overlooked.

[dmbaggs]

That's true but isn't the shipping standard between 1-6 decks (and maybe more). I looked what shipping would be for 1,2,4, and 6 decks and it's $6.00 bucks for all. So if you think about it how you are with the shipping adding to the price of the deck than the more you buy the less it is. For 6 decks I'm paying $1 for shipping on each deck.


Does that make sense? 


* I checked for a brick and the shipping is still $6.00 so thats 50 cents a deck shipping

[Evan]

I ordered a brick of them and shipping was $6
I was really surprised by the price! Its usually much more than that

[dmbaggs]

I ordered a brick of them and shipping was $6
I was really surprised by the price! Its usually much more than that

Yeah I guess the shipping is good/bad depending on how many you order. It could be incentive to order a couple more deck. *shoulder shrug*

[john]

*I wont make a new topic for this until we know more then 1 sentence*

https://twitter.com/#!/Ellusionist/status/162028709006675968

"Look out Chinatown Team Ellusionist is coming."

What would this mean 

[phantom1412]

Actually I think the deck cost 8.88$ because the shipping is included in that price.
Because, when I ordered them, I change the decks from range 6-12 decks and the shipping price didn't change.

And this might be the reason of the minimum 4 decks as well, if you buy 4 decks that means you have around 8$ for shipping. But, for 3 or less, the shipping that included in the deck price isn't enough.