Hello,
My name is Andy and I am from Joplin, MO which is in southwest Missouri.
It was just about two and a half months ago that I got into playing card collecting. It all started when I began researching why there were so many custom Bicycle playing cards on Kickstarter. The first one I came across was Jackson's Federal 52, part 2. Needless to say I thought they were great looking cards so I pledged and started looking around for other cool decks and found Ellusionist, Theory11, Dan & Dave, and others. I now have between around 70 decks.
My interest in playing cards is mostly as a collector. I have been reading Card College vol. 1 and learning a few things, I do not think I can get good enough at slight of hand to actually be good at magic. I enjoy doing the self working card tricks and some cardistry, it makes for a nice change of pace after working as a software developer all day.
I found the Discourse when I started looking for other collectors. One of the things I really like is reading folks opinions on new decks, it really makes me look at what makes playing cards great differently.