well at least it's only 19 bucks as opposed to 147 bucks for the black club membership
Which is why I joined. It's not a bank-breaking sum and if there's some cool limited-edition decks involved, why not? I can even go for the tchotchkes, assuming they're either cool, useful or both. For example, the flask and the rocks glass displayed in the promo photos wouldn't be much use to me, seeing as how I stopped drinking nearly six years ago... But if there's t-shirts and caps (which would likely come from Jacks and Jokers), I'm down with that. Uncut sheets of their workhorse deck models might be nice as well, like Tally Ho or Hoyle Shellback.
BTW: did you happen to notice they're no longer advertising the Tally Ho Fan Back on their site? They're still on sale at the Wingra Direct partner shop.
OK, I just logged into my account there for the first time. What do I see so far...
Four departments: Interviews, Articles, Contests and VIP Shop.
Interviews: two so far, Neil Patrick Harris and Jonathan Bayme. The former, besides being a cult-favorite actor and magician, produced a wildly-successful live magic show in LA who's run ends tomorrow, while the latter is founder/CEO of T11.
Articles: again, two - the recipe for the classic make-or-break cocktail, the Old Fashioned, and the five best fictional poker players.
Contests: just one for January, "The Adventures of Joker", a photo contest with five top prizes - an uncut sheet of Bicycle Standard signed by Neil Patrick Harris.
VIP Shop: so far only one product available, a six-ounce steel and leather hip flask. But they show several "coming soon" items. Five of them are framed prints - the modern joker, the classic "best bower" first-of-a-kind Bicycle joker, the classic first-of-a-kind AoS as seen in vintage reprint decks, a Bicycle Cupid Ace and a Rider Back. The sixth "coming soon" item is a new deck called the Bicycle Griffin, referring to the classic mythical gryphon creature and not the stars of the show "Family Guy"...
As a whole, the site has a dash of the "old-timey" look of the "Club 808" logo in a clean greyscale theme. I like it. Think of the $19 as a subscription to a magazine that's focused on cards and card culture, because that's a much more accurate description of what it is. For that, I think the price was worth it, especially factoring in the Club 808 deck as a freebie. Say the deck's worth five bucks - the "Subscription" now costs only $14.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the Club 808 exclusives are sold through Wingra Direct (shopbicyclecards.com), a subsidiary of USPC (which is itself a subsidiary, making Wingra a "grand-subsidiary"...
) - the whole VIP Store is on that site, with links allowing you to get back to the "Club 808" section of USPC's consumer site, bicyclecards.com/808/
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