Thanks for the input. I have lowered the cost from $9 to $8 on the early bird special since it started. Did you mean $8 is still high? The next lowest is $7 and with the margin that's pretty much giving them away with shipping single decks. Since I'm allowing an almost unlimited number of decks at the early bird price that's kind of scary though it would be slightly better margins with multiple deck shipments.
The way the early bird works for most is that you limit it to a small number of people who jump on the bandwagon first. For example, you can have multiple early bird tiers. First twenty investors at $7/deck, next fifty at $8/deck, next hundred at $9/deck and the rest at $10 - naturally charging extra for international shipping. And of course, people who buy in bulk outside of an early bird special would be offered discounts of some kind as incentive.
The bulk of your early birds will want two or three decks, I think. The number of single-deck shipments is not high at all. But, if you wanted to eliminate that risk factor, make all of your early birds (or at least most of them) for two-deck sets with a buy-in for extras. For example, regular one-deck cost would be $9 or $10, with an early bird of perhaps $17 for two decks, pay $8 for each extra deck, limit X number of people.
The coin idea is interesting. We only cast in pewter so we are limited by that. We could look into doing mutiple colors in a lacquer finish but that would be a new process for us too. All our figurines are sold unassembled and unpainted. Pewter does have a low noise. We can cast with a pretty high degree of precision as our miniatures are extremely detailed at 30mm tall. Don, do you mean the edges should have a champher on them?
Well, if all you can do is pewter, that might not be enough for a coin magician. Perhaps you can make key rings or something instead. If I'm not mistaken, pewter is kind of soft and non-magnetic, right? And if by "champher" you mean the zig-zag edge like the one found on freshly-minted quarters, then yes, that's what I mean. In coin manufacture, it's milling.
I haven't checked the price on metallic inks on the cards and I'm not sure it's a good fit. For anything custom on the tuck boxes it's INSANELY expensive. We're talking doubling the cost of the entire deck doing embossed or metallic ink +custom seal. I honestly have no idea how other guys do it. Custom 6 or 12 pack cases is something I'm looking into but would have to be done with another printer than USPCC because of the cost. It's something we may be able to do on a short run with a packaging printer we use.
Most deck designers save things like those fancy add-ons for overfunding goals, like if the deck exceeds the funding goal needed just to get it made by a certain percentage. If you got, for example, 300% of the money you needed just to make the "standard" version of the deck, I'm sure at that point you could spring for a custom tuck box seal or a metallic ink box or something. You don't necessarily have to make the cards themselves with metallics unless you really make a hefty overfunding target, like 400% or 500% or whatever still keeps it profitable for you.
Conjuring Creations did contact me when I first showed the previews. It seems like they are extremely busy though so I doubt that will happen. I've seen a couple metal card clips through outsourced manufacturers but I don't know if that's as attractive as the Eco Clips.
It's because they clips are not simply attractive, but very, very light, providing just enough pressure to keep the cards flat while at the same time giving edge protection that metal clips don't. You'd think the bulk of the wood would be a turn-off, but I actually don't find it to be a hassle - an Eco-clipped deck fits in the back pocket of my jeans without any problems. They're also kinder to embossed tuck boxes. The metal cases will protect the cards well, but not the boxes. One might also think that the glue would give way, but they're using something seriously industrial-grade to hold the pieces together.
The stretch goals aren't final yet. I've been having difficulty coming up with goals that I can give everyone that are meaningful and affordable. I might do goals that are only available to orders over X decks or something. Another possibility is doing 'unlocks' for items at certain funding levels that people can add on their order for additional cost. This way we can make sure we have enough people that might be interested in purchasing an add on so we don't get killed by making like one or two of some expensive and time consuming special item.
Thanks again for all the advice.
You really don't have to go too crazy with special items. Uncut sheets, posters, t-shirts, art prints - that's the most likely and most desired special items for a deck project. Some projects go way past that and it works for them, like the Bicycle War of Currents deck, but that's more the exception than the rule, I think. Maybe something small like a key ring or a pendant on a silk string if you can make these cheaply enough in pewter - people can use keyrings and the pendants, if themed with the deck, would likely look beautiful. A t-shirt of the card back and/or an Ace of Spades or one of the court cards would be great. Paul Carpenter did some nice stuff with t-shirts for his Tendril campaign.
But don't forget the value of "value-added" overfunding goals - something that makes everyone get a better product. Like I mentioned above, custom blah-blah added to the deck/box.
If you're going to do gaff cards, maybe you can do like Russ Kercheval did for the Americana deck and let your backers vote on their favorite. You can also make a high-level reward that someone gets to design the concept for one (or both, if you do two) gaff cards. Another cool high-level reward is to incorporate someone's likeness on a card - either a court card or one of the jokers. Some also go for having their name mentioned somewhere as a "trustee" or "honored donor" or some such title, perhaps on the box somewhere if you aren't doing an ad card.
Just spitballing some ideas around - feel free to use or discard as desired.
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