Aristocrat - Shade (2003) Movie Deck

[cardician]

Can anyone enlighten me with some information pertaining to this deck. 

From what I've read, the deck was produced from USPC for the movie Shade.
I've seen a preview of this deck for the Phantom Display promo by Ellusionist.

Does anyone know roughly how many decks were produced?  And where about someone can obtain such a rare deck.

Thank you,

[Don Boyer]

Can anyone enlighten me with some information pertaining to this deck. 

From what I've read, the deck was produced from USPC for the movie Shade.
I've seen a preview of this deck for the Phantom Display promo by Ellusionist.

Does anyone know roughly how many decks were produced?  And where about someone can obtain such a rare deck.

Thank you,

Do you have any good, clean images of the cards?  I haven't seen the movie and was unable to find a clear shot with the cards in it.

EDIT: OK, I looked around a little.  I saw a clip where Jamie Foxx loses a fat stack of cash - they're playing with red Tally Ho Circle Backs.  The design's perhaps a century old, so no, it wasn't made for the movie.  Still found in the New York City area and in magic shops, hard to find elsewhere.

In Stallone's briefcase at the start of the film, I can identify Bicycle Rider Backs (classic box, of course, since the movie came out before the 2009 box change), Bee Diamond Backs, Mavericks (really cheapo brand these days), Steamboats, Tally Hos (probably both backs, but you can't tell from the front of the tuck box) and Ramblers.  The Ramblers are the least common - they're are some shops still selling gilded Ramblers in Asia, but they're harder to find in the States.  I'm not certain they're still in print.  Steamboats would be the next least common - Dan and Dave did a reprint recently, and USPC stopped making the original a handful of years ago, though there's still a fair amount of them floating around if you check eBay.  Bicycles and Bees are as common as dirt, Mavericks are mostly found in the US South and in Family Dollar stores (in a custom box made for them with the price on it).  They're lousy, dollar-store quality decks made in China.

In the ad over at Ellusionist, all I can see are two of their decks - a pack of Absinthe and a pack of Artifice Tundra (a modified design that's sort of a cross between the white Ghost deck and the Artifice deck - it has the Artifice design but the Ghost color scheme).  Not rare at all - I believe both decks are still in stock there, though I'm not sure if the Absinthe is available by itself because it was part of a six-deck set.  Correction, I just checked, at least some of the Prohibition deck set are available individually, including the Absinthe deck.  I don't believe either deck could have been in the film, since they we made long after the movie's release.

Perhaps if you presented photos of the deck in question, that would help to narrow it down more.

[cardician]

Don,

Here are some pics that I have. 

According to the IMDb movie info, this is what was posted about the cards used.
"All of the playing cards used are manufactured by the United States Playing Card Company. The brands shown are Aristocrat (very hard to come by), Bee, Bicycle, and Tally-Ho (which is primarily available in the New York City/Long Island area). The USPC also created special decks of casino grade Aristocrat SHADE cards with the film logo as a gift to writer/director Damian Nieman"

I know they use alot of different decks in the movie.

You mention that the decks E uses and ships with for the Phantom Display are common, but they also mention the following;
Note: our thanks to Shade for starring in the Phantom video. Please also note that Shade's ring is not avaiable for sale, nor the Shade deck which is one of 100 from the movie "Shade".

If you watch the demo video, you can clearly see the deck and design of the cards used to promote the product.

BTW, thanks for the inquisitive info from your previous post..

[Don Boyer]

Don,

Here are some pics that I have. 

According to the IMDb movie info, this is what was posted about the cards used.
"All of the playing cards used are manufactured by the United States Playing Card Company. The brands shown are Aristocrat (very hard to come by), Bee, Bicycle, and Tally-Ho (which is primarily available in the New York City/Long Island area). The USPC also created special decks of casino grade Aristocrat SHADE cards with the film logo as a gift to writer/director Damian Nieman"

I know they use alot of different decks in the movie.

You mention that the decks E uses and ships with for the Phantom Display are common, but they also mention the following;
Note: our thanks to Shade for starring in the Phantom video. Please also note that Shade's ring is not avaiable for sale, nor the Shade deck which is one of 100 from the movie "Shade".

If you watch the demo video, you can clearly see the deck and design of the cards used to promote the product.

BTW, thanks for the inquisitive info from your previous post..

Well, if the deck was given as a gift to the director, was it even in the movie?  If there's only 100 and all of them were given to Mr. Nieman, it stands to reason he's the only source of that deck.  It would be among the most rare decks out there, considering that he would likely have held on to a fair percentage of them for his personal use.

Having said that, there's other Aristocrat decks out there.  It's a popular-enough brand for casino decks, and it used to be printed regularly by USPC.  They did a reprint of them in 2011, and Dan and Dave had a release earlier this year where they obtained some vintage Aristocrat decks and replaced the tuck boxes with new ones they had made.  Aristocrat reprint decks are excellent quality and shouldn't be too expensive or hard to find just yet - Theory11 carries them for $4.95 a pack with discounts - 10% off for 6-11 decks and 15% off for 12 or more.  (T11 also carries the Tally Ho decks with the same discount schedule for only $2.95 a pack.)  At one time, USPC offered an Aristocrat stock to card designers placing custom orders, but that's no longer the case.

The Bee Stinger reprints from Theory11 used Aristocrat stock.  But look carefully when buying.  It was thought that when the "black" (the color was never named for the initial release) Stingers came out, that it was a limited print run, not to be repeated.  However, it (like a shockingly high number of decks not available on T11's website) was indeed made in at least two print runs, with the second and any subsequent print runs being made in Erlanger, while the original run was from Cincinnati.  For the red Bee Stingers, the first run was made in Erlanger and it's unknown if additional runs were made - if they were, they're identical to the first run.  It's known that this was done for another USPC-made T11 deck, the Propaganda deck - the Erlanger copies sell for noticeably less than the Cincinnati copies.  It's suspected that more such "sold out" T11 decks were made in a similar manner, using more than just the one print run, making them readily available at third-part retailers, but any decks of a given brand made after the move to Erlanger simply look like other decks of that brand made after the move to Erlanger.  There is a few cases where they've spoken up to announce additional print runs - four such cases would be the Bicycle Guardians, Bicycle Platinum, DeckOne Industrial Edition and Sentinels.

I must have missed the deck in the video because I was going only by the still images!

I could not say for certain whether Aristocrat is still an active brand for casino decks.  Casinos get treated a bit differently than Custom Department customers do.  As profitable as the Custom Department is, their casino sales are much greater.