It's Sunday morning, June 17th and Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there. For the first time ever, I'm actually getting to celebrate Father's Day - and no, I didn't have a baby! My future wife has a son who lives at home with us! Now that that's out of the way, it's time for another edition of the
Kickstarter Card and Deck-Related Projects Report! I'm your host, Don Boyer, "live" from New York.
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Please note that all times for project endings are given in Universal Coordinated Time, or UTC. This is the same as Greenwich Mean Time for all practical purposes, displayed in 24-hour time. Subtract four hours for US Eastern Daylight Time, seven hours for US Pacific Daylight Time.
I'll start off as usual with "The Rundown" - what's up, what's down, what's sideways and pear-shaped with the playing cards projects from last week?
Sun 17 June 2012, 14:46 - Nick Lampsas'
Metagalactic "Blackout" Glow In the Dark Playing Cards: $120 raised, $6,000 goal, rounded down to 1%. No one here ever expected this deck to survive. Only 8 hours remain.
Fri 22 June 2012, 19:01 - 4pm Designs'
"The Grid" Playing Cards: $42,727 raised, $5,000 goal, 855%. Up about a grand-plus from last week. This is definitely one for the record books - this guy knows how to promote a deck of cards, that's for sure. I look forward to their next project, as this one will be over by the time I log my next report. Oh, and don't forget - there's less than a thousand decks left that haven't been promised to investors, so if you want in, what the hell have you been waiting for?
Thu 05 July 2012, 21:57 - Patrick Burke and Ethan Soper's
ULTRAVIOLET Playing Cards: $9,565 raised, $15,000 goal, 64%. Up exactly $2,300. Things are looking MUCH better for this deck on the second time around. With about two-and-a-half weeks left, it's far from a sure thing just yet. I expect something like what happened with the Bicycle Eclipse deck - a photo finish, hopefully with this deck ahead by a nose!
Sun 8 July 2012, 22:00 - Dave Huber's
Custom Artistic and Photographically Unique Deck of Cards: $51 raised, $15,809 goal, rounded down to 0%. Wow - this deck had an excellent concept, but it's got zero momentum out of the gate and doesn't appear to be hurrying up any time soon. In addition to the issues I mentioned about this deck last week, I have not seen or heard one peep out of the deck's designer - there's absolutely no promoting in card collecting circles at all. Another of many decks designed by people (and Kickstarter project creators) who thought they simply had to post it and everyone would come running... Dude, you gotta promote, promote, PROMOTE, or you're dead.
Mon 16 July 2012, 22:30 - Seth Thomas and Spencer Rohan's
War of Currents Playing Cards: $8,169 raised, $8,500 goal, 96%, with about a lunar month left. It's up nearly two grand from last week (and my apologies for misquoting the goal amount last week, it was NOT $8,000). This is pretty much a sure thing with so much time and so little distance to cross. Electrical engineers everywhere, rejoice!
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And now for New Business - what new deck projects have sprung up in the past week?
Well, I have two decks for you, and each in its own special way is probably one of the quirkiest decks you've ever seen coming out of Kickstarter!
Wed 11 July 2012, 14:21 - Ana Cortez from Sante Fe, NM presents
"The Book of Knowing" - Extraordinary Playing Cards. In a project that's part homage to her dearly-departed father's artwork and part divination deck, Ms. Cortez has taken selections from her father's collection and is using them as the faces for a rather unique deck of playing cards. Scratch that - they're playing cards only in the sense that they have the usual thirteen values, four suits and two jokers that make up your average Bicycle deck, but the resemblance stops right there.
She personally describes the deck as "perfect for meditation, inspiration, divination, card playing, story telling, or simply to appreciate as art pieces." Note that "card playing" was quite a distance down that list... I wouldn't call a deck that's three inches wide and four-and-a-half inches long (that's TWICE the size of a bridge deck, folks!) "perfect for...playing cards" by any stretch of the imagination. Were it not for the fact that this has the standard playing card deck features to it in terms of deck composition, I'd sooner file this with the tarot decks I list in "Not Your Average 52-Plus-Two" below. Many of the rewards include an e-book called "Playing Card Oracle" and/or a live reading with Ms. Cortez herself.
Magicians would likely pass because the art would distract from any trick you used them for (plus they have images that print into the bleed on some of the faces). Flourishers would need a whole new set of skills to work with cards this big. So, buy it for the art, buy it for reading your past and/or future, but don't buy it because you're looking for a new deck for your beer-and-pretzels poker game next week. The project is at $1,123 raised, $6,260 goal, 17% with three-and-a-half weeks to go. I left her a question about who's manufacturing the deck for her, but I'm thinking that the answer won't include the letters U, S, P or C anywhere near each other...
Fri 20 July 2012, 06:59 - Prepared to get "brain-Washington'd": out of Tacoma, WA, by Amy McBride and Maija McKnight (jointly known as Tacoma Makes), comes
Tacoma Artist Playing Cards, and that's got to be the most times I've ever written "Tacoma" in a single sentence! This isn't your typical big-deal USPC project; while it's true USPC is making it, it's actually got more in common with a well-made tourism deck. Fourteen artists join forces, design 54 cards between them, and every single one is a popular or noteworthy location in the city of Tacoma, except the Jokers, which will be caricatures of two famous "Tacomans" (or would "Tacomi" be more correct? Maybe Tacomians?). While I'm sure it will look gorgeous, it's got limited appeal for people not interested in Tacoma, unless they happen to specialize in collecting tourism decks.
What makes it crystal clear that Tacoma fans are their target audience is that all deck rewards are listed in dollar amounts that DON'T include even domestic shipping, never mind international! The preferred method of delivery is actually
in-person pick-up! Everything else costs extra. This, combined with all the rewards except for the $1 pledge including invitations (standard or VIP) to the launch party, and that the cheapest reward to include a deck is $20, makes this deck a real specialty item and not meant for the world at large, but just the parts of it that exist in - where else? - Tacoma, WA! I'm really surprised at the number of big-ticket rewards people have pledged for - this is clearly aimed at and meant for very loyal locals. This project is at $8,535 raised, $13,000 goal, 65% with just over a month remaining 'til the deadline.
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And now, this week's "Not Your Average 52-Plus-Two" - your non-standard deck projects. As usual, this does not include specialized games using non-standard playing cards, "deck building" games or collectible playing cards, but it does include art decks, traditional decks using designs other than the standard Anglo-Rouen 52-card deck (such as tarock, tarocchi, skat, hanafuda, etc.), and tarot and other fortune-telling decks.
Mon 11 June 2012, 17:36 - Warren Tusk's
The New Tarot: $8,148/$7,500, 109%. SUCCESSFUL. Looks like there were just enough people interested in the idea of a "sequel" to the traditional Tarot deck. The art's pretty nice, too!
Sat 16 June 2012, 16:59 - Doug Beasley's
Vision Quest Photo Assignment Cards: $12,589/$5K, 252%. SUCCESSFUL. This project really had the legs to go the distance, despite it being focused more on photography than any sort of divination. I'd compare it to a photographer-specific "Whack Pack". If you don't know what that is, look it up!
Sun 17 June 2012, 06:05 - Aimee Whatley's
Archetypes Tarot Deck: $1,115/$3K, 37%. UNSUCCESSFUL. As I type this, the project ended about two hours ago. It was a cool concept, but just didn't grab the attention it needed.
Fri 22 June 2012, 18:39 - Richard Fox's
The Symbolist Tarot Deck: $4,168/$8K, 52%, 5 days left. Mr. Fox, I'm sorry to say that your deck is unlikely to succeed. But if I were you, I'd consider what I learned from this project and give it another try. Despite the long odds, I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Sat 23 June, 22:55 - Adam Blodgett's
The Chibi Tarot: $3,866/$5K, 77%, 6 days remaining. Holy cow - he snagged over a grand in funding in the past week! If he can keep this up and get the momentum going just a little faster, he might make it - I predict another photo finish! You should check this out - the cards vaguely reminded me of "South Park", which I always considered cute (yes, I have a somewhat different sense of cute; get over it!).
Thu 28 June 2012, 00:57 - The Tarot Collective's
The Collective Tarot, Round III: $22,869/$20K, 114%. Up another $1,800 in the past week with ten days to go.
Fri 29 June 2012, 22:18 - Brian Ciesicki's
Triple Topper - 3 dimensional card system: $45/$5.5K, rounded down to 0%. Another week unchanged. I looked at the creator description for Mr. Ciesicki - it mentions that he's got "10 years experience promoting my game." I really hope to hell he's not working in advertising anywhere...
Mon 13 Aug, 11:05 - New to the list this week is Chris Alan Martin's
The Chris Martin Tarot from Cheboygan, MI. Where do I begin? Is it with the fact that he named his project in a (ahem)
very humble fashion? Or perhaps that his whole project description takes two very poorly-written sentences in a single paragraph? What about the fact that some of his rewards have a projected delivery date of
January, 2014, and the earliest reward would be expected to ship August, 2013? Perhaps I should go with the fact that his goal is a pie-in-the-sky twenty-five thousand dollars? Or maybe that his decks require a minimum donation of
seventy-five dollars to get just one? I mean, it does come with a signed print of one of the original 16"x20" cards, so maybe that makes it worth it...
I know - I'll just copy and paste the first paragraph of his personal mini-bio!
"I have been creating artwork for over thirty years. I am creating what I would consider to be a classic tarot deck with a lot of symbolism and hidden meaning in each card, very intricate details. The style of this tarot deck could best be described as Rider-Waite/Robin Wood style Tarot mixed with the work of artist Alex Grey and a tinge of evilness."
Hey - who
doesn't want a tinge of evilness in their tarot deck? Am I right? I'm betting his two backers do...
The project current stands at $150/$25K, rounded down to 0%. Hey - he's got two months, it could happen...
That's all for now. Have a good week and keep on shuffling!
