Found Original Black Tiger Deck

[jmrock]

I was hoping some of you E Heads might help me sort out if I found a special deck... I was cleaning up and found an original Black Tiger Deck released by Ellusionist... This was the first ever deck released by them and was a big deal at the time... To my knowledge, custom decks were not being produced at all... Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe this was the originator for the custom playing card market... The deck I'm guessing is approximately 12 years old or more... Is this valuable?  Does anyone have any idea what this deck might be worth and is it a sought after item... Thanks in advance... -J.Rock

[Aaron]

AHHH! I want to buy one of these! I had an ISO thread about these like 2 days ago but canceled it to find out what a 1st run deck looks like. I don't know what they are worth though I don't tthink they are quite 12 years though, wern't they released in 2004? idk, but I would be interested in buying this for the right price.

[xZEROx]

It is one of the first custom decks, E started it all with this deck. Though I'm not sure about its monetary value.

[Don Boyer]

Certain collectors would pay a pretty penny for it.  Most of the market would simply shrug and say "but I can get those at E for less."  You want the kind of completist who not only wants all the decks in a particular category (or all categories if he's wealthy and insane), but he also wants all the individual printings as well.

I actually ended up in an argument with an eBay seller when I was buying what he advertised as "Bicycle Guardians, v. 2", but it was simply the second printing of v. 1.  When I informed him of what the version-2 deck was, he said something along the lines of "but that's version 3, then - T11 has no idea what they're talking about," as if they didn't know their own products or something.  HE'S the kind of guy who would buy that deck!

[Reylek]

The first Black Tigers were released in 2004.  There were 5000 decks, which sold out in about 96 hours.  Hard to pin an exact value on them.  But yes, these are generally regarded as the deck that started the recent custom deck craze, although it took a few years to really start getting into the swing that it's in now.  The past couple of years have seen tremendous growth.

[jmrock]

Well if anyone wants to throw a stupid number at me, I'll certainly consider... However, I kind of like it because of what it represents... Not really a for sale post... Just saying... But it would have to be a really heavy number for THE DECK that started it all...

[entrails]

Does anyone have an estimate for a value of this particular deck?

[Don Boyer]

Does anyone have an estimate for a value of this particular deck?

It's not something that's so easily estimated.  It's an individual thing.  Some would pay top dollar because it's the first of the first in the current custom deck wave.  Some would pay a small premium because it's the old UV500 stock.  Some would pay about what a Black Tiger deck sells for at E, and not much more.  It can't be easily valued because there are so few that ever make it to the marketplace, and certainly not recently.

Looking over recently closed auctions on eBay, there's exactly one for a Bicycle Black Tiger deck from the first printing - it was JMRock's auction, he asked $189 and got zero bids.  Based on that, the most conclusive thing anyone can say is that the market doesn't feel it's worth $189 at this time.  How much lower is the actual value?  There's no way to know without more auctions being attempted.  Now, for a "plain old" Ohio-made deck, the prices fetched have varied between about $7-$20, with all but one auction in that range closing successfully.