Hello all, I do hope you can help me, or, more specifically, my niece, with some great information. My niece knows how much I love playing cards. She would like to make / pay for a single custom deck of playing cards with family photos on the court cards and a simple text-based back design for my collection. At one time she had a website link to a company that did this sort of thing, but now that link is broken. Do you have any suggestions on companies who make affordable single custom decks? Any information would be appreciate. Thanks for your time.
First, welcome to the forum! PCF is a great place for deck collectors.
Second, As you can see, I've merged your topic with another, recent topic that covers the exact same question. Websites like the ones described in the previous posts give your niece (or anyone else) the option to submit designs and print as many or as few as they want - and there often provide simple editing tools for people wanting a simple deck design like the one she proposed. In fact, she could probably, if she wanted, place photos on each of the 54 cards in the deck of whatever she wished, and place a photo on the card back - or, like you said, just some words, though she might have to create the text using a graphics program first, then upload it as a graphic to the online deck design software at the printer's site. "Graphics program" need not be fancy - it can be as simple as the Paint program that comes with Windows computers.
In addition to the companies mentioned earlier, USPC offers some simple options for making small-run, "personalized" decks like what she wants to make as well, but they use a third-party company, Zazzle, to manage the work for them, the quality is not as high as what USPC uses on their mass-produced decks, the per-deck cost is high and the customization options are much more limited - decks are poker-sized only, you choose your own single custom back image of your design, and custom face sets of THEIR design, of which you have to choose one - most are color scheme variants of the basic Bicycle deck faces, and the few that aren't are based on other Bicycle deck designs - the "Tragic Royalty" faces "Halloween-esque, pseudo-Gorey designs), the "Election" faces (Lincoln, Washington, Betsy Ross) and "Distressed" (early Bicycle face designs, faux-aged to "look" over 100 years old), as well as "E-Z See Lo-Vision" (huge letters, numbers and pips that take up the whole face, no art) and "Jumbo" (reduced-size art with big indices). So no putting Uncle Angeldancer on the King of Clubs or whatever. If you opt not to use USPC's faces but get generic ones instead printed by "On Demand Technologies in Overland, KS," the price drops from $20.95 to $9.95.