As regards pricing, what the project costs is the producer's problem not the backers'.
If the producer ends up with a price which is competitive with the pricing of comparable decks on Kickstarter, it will be of no concern to most backers how much profit the producer is making for himself (or not making for himself).
If the price is much lower than comparable decks, astute backers will be concerned that the producer hasn't done his homework, will eventually realize that he is going to lose money, and will abandon the project.
If the price is significantly higher than comparable decks, then potential backers will take their money somewhere else. There are plenty of Kickstarter decks, and most collectors are not so obsessive that they have to collect every deck. Their money will go further backing other decks. The few collectors who are obsessive, and loaded with money, won't suffice to fund the project -- and anyway, even obsessive people can be aggravated by an unreasonably high price.
So, my advice to this producer would be: set the pricing to be like the pricing of all the other successful Kickstarter projects. If that means you can't do the project, then don't. Probably you will be forced to take this advice in the end whether you want to or not, because the project won't fund if you don't.
But there's a flaw in this. There are cases where a producer can indeed produce a deck for a much lower price. When purchasing decks in larger amount, for example, the per-deck costs drop, allowing the producer to charge a lower price, perhaps even below the typical market price for a deck. And what exactly would that typical market price be in the first place? Different decks have different costs associated with their production because of things like the features of the deck itself or the costs of shipping (if they're still included, since now many projects don't include shipping). There'd be no way to compare something like the NOC deck or the Silver edition of the 52 Plus Joker Club deck or the Stranger and Stranger Ultimate deck, if they were offered on Kickstarter.
While it sounds nice on the surface, the suggestion you gave oversimplifies the problem of deck pricing.
Your points are valid, but they don't really contradict my main point. Unless backers have unlimited funds and unlimited obsession to collect every KS deck, they will tend to allocate the funds they have for buying decks rationally. A deck which is lot more expensive than comparable decks will need to be "more better" (as my son said at 3) than the other decks on some dimension: superior art, a more well-known artist, a more limited run, shiny embossing on the tuck box, holograms, whatever. A producer can come up with any story he likes as to why he needs to price his deck higher, but even if the story is true, it isn't relevant, except to satisfy himself and the Internet that he is a nice guy.. Nice guy or not, In the end the backers will purchase the decks that provide the best price/performance.
A deck by an artist with no better a track record than the others, or with a print run which is not more limited, or which has no special "features' needs to be around the same price as the others, too. If it is the first time out by the artist, less limited, or with a printer thought to be inferior, the deck needs to be cheaper than the others. Or you better hope that backers of Kickstarter deck projects aren't rational.
Yes, the market is generally rational - though I've seen some really strange decks get funded in the past that really shouldn't have, while I've seen great decks fail.
I was refuting a single point you made, which I'll quote:
If the price is much lower than comparable decks, astute backers will be concerned that the producer hasn't done his homework, will eventually realize that he is going to lose money, and will abandon the project.I showed how there are cases where a deck can actually come in with a lower backer cost while not being a case of the creator not doing his or her homework. Sure, we have had at least one project where a kid (literally, a kid, on KS with the consent of his parents) thought he could make a Bicycle-branded deck for a mere $1,000, in which case, no, this creator DIDN'T do any homework, though to his credit, he at least didn't tell us that the dog ate it.
But there are also other cases where a deck can come in with a really low price - a key example would be Jackson Robinson's Silver Arrow project. Granted, the project didn't fund because he canceled it, but in terms of the budget, he was spot on to make a project that would cost a mere $6 a deck to the backer, a price that's practically unheard of. The point of the project was that by producing in a much larger number than usual, he was able to get per-deck costs very low, to the point that he could undercut the price of practically all the decks on Kickstarter and still make a profit on it. Unfortunately, this message got lost when he created a limited edition version of the deck which couldn't be purchased and collectors complained over the fact that they had to buy multiples of the standard edition in order to get the limited edition.
Another prime example was the Bicycle Spectrum deck by magician Cosmo Solano. He created a trick deck where all the cards had a different colors back, and the project as a whole had a tiny goal, merely $5,000 for a limited edition print run of 5,000 decks. It wasn't that he got some kind of really sweet deal from USPC - it was that he was providing some of the funding out of his own pocket. He actually had adequate funds to make the entire print run on his own, privately funded, without any Kickstarter project. But he brought the project to KS with the intent of generating an audience, because even back then, people were realizing that all the eyeballs in the card collector community were hanging out at KS, looking for decks to fund. In the end, he created more than just one print run, the project was so popular.
So a low price tag isn't an automatic red flag that someone doesn't know what they're doing. I'll grant that in many cases is it, but you can't simply label a low-goal or low-deck-cost project as an imminent failure solely for the reason of the lower goal or the lower cost per deck to the backer. As a criterion for evaluating a project, it doesn't stand on its own and shouldn't even be a consideration unless the other factors are present, such as an insanely low, no private funding is being used, the printer is known to be more costly than the amount of money sought, the creator lacks any practical business experience beyond "You want fries with that?," etc.
You have raised some interesting points in regards to collectors.
After this campaign is funded, Fyodor definitely would like to have limited run prints of this and another deck he is developing. We will definitely keep this feedback in mind and produce future decks with the collector in mind. Especially the advice of printers. We are already exploring costing with the current kickstarter to see about adding a new stretch goal to change printers.
In regards to pricing based around the market. We have developed the pricing do to our local market. I understand that this is appealing to a worldwide crowd, but majority of support and the sale of the extra decks will be locally, or at least in Australia. We will expand our targeted demographic into the future.
I would like to compare the pricing to a cost of beer. In our kickstarter, the price of a collection of 54 pieces of artwork that has been developed by the artist for the past 8 years is roughly the same price of a 6 pack of decent beer. The surplus decks will be sold in various shops and galleries for roughly the price of a case of cheap beer.
If we have 250 decks leftover, the amount of money that we can get from that will be enough that we can reprint the decks without asking for help. One goal we have is to not become dependent on crowd funding.
Again, I really appreciate all the feedback, we have wanted to produce the best quality, best feeling, best handling decks. Now that we know that their is a community with such passion about this medium I am certain we can develop something amazing with the more esteemed collector in mind, as opposed to the person who wants a really cool deck of cards.
Do remember, this is our first time doing a project as large as this. Your support and positive attitude can do wonders.
Considering what Kickstarter is, you should consider from day one that your audience will be global, not merely local. If you were seeking only local buyers, then you need to find "Kickstarter.com.au" or whatever the local equivalent would be (assuming it even exists). It's one thing if you're creating a geographically-based project of some kind, be it funding for the world's first underground park with piped-in sunlight (yes, it's a project running right now, the Lowline, to be constructed in an abandoned trolley yard under the Lower East Side of Manhattan) or if you're creating a deck like the Tacoma deck, where every single image on each card is of a local landmark that most people outside of the area would never have heard of. It's quite another when the project is simply a deck of cards with no specific geographic attachment to it other than the creators' desire to distribute it locally.
I would compare it to walking to the edge of the Grand Canyon, shouting something into the canyon and expecting to be heard only by the few people standing next to you and not the dozens or hundreds of campers within earshot of the echo. Another apt comparison would be to take out an ad in a national magazine about your studio apartment for rent in a small town somewhere in the middle of nowhere in particular. You might want to find a renter who lives or at least works within a few miles, but you're advertising to an audience spread out over hundreds or even thousands of miles from where your apartment is.
Does a localized version of Kickstarter exist near you? Probably not. But what did people do before Kickstarter? They advertised a product they planned to make and, if they lacked the funding but didn't require too much to get it off the ground, they took pre-orders to ease the financial burden of paying for the creation of the project first. If you were only seeking local customers in modest numbers, that would have been a better model to follow. Additionally, a more traditional funding route might have worked better, such as partnering with a retailer also interested in a more local or domestic focus that was willing to make the investment.
