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Project Summary:
This project will create a limited run of Key West Resort & Casino playing cards with Liberty Playing Card Company of Arlington, Texas, on their proprietary "Imperial Linen" coated cardstock. The cards will have a unique new back design created for this project by J5 Design, and will be packaged in custom full tuck boxes.
What is The Key West Resort & Casino?
The Key West Resort & Casino doesn't really exist. It's a "fantasy casino" and a line of professional-quality casino chips created for home poker players in 2005 by a Las Vegas retailer and the 100-year-old American casino chip manufacturer Atlantic Standard Molding. The retailer wanted to create a vintage, 1950s-style real clay casino chip, perfect in every detail. They turned to ASM, makers of some of the first and most famous table chips for early Las Vegas casinos. The result was a line of professional-quality casino chips that look and feel like they belong on the casino tables of Old Las Vegas.
This project: The playing cards
In 2011, I bought the rights to the Key West line from the Las Vegas retailer, and have been making Key West chips with ASM ever since, for myself and other members of a website called Chiptalk.net. In January, 2012, I contacted J5 Design, and asked the artist who created the Key West logo to create a new playing card for the casino, as if it really existed. The result was a new, unique card back design the artist called the "casino diamond back," with two back colors, imperial blue and red, taken from colors of the Key West "NCV" and $5 chips. The Key West logo was placed, end-on-end, like those real casino cards we've all seen, and J5 created a custom "Ace of Spades" face with the casino name, and the logo blended artfully into the spade. The overall look of these decks is, by design, decidely "old school," to match the retro look of the casino chips.
We took the card and tuck box designs to Liberty Playing Card Company of Arlington, Texas, who famously made the Iraq Most Wanted cards for the U.S. government. Liberty used their high-end "Imperial Linen" coated cardstock and unique Liberty jumbo pips and face art. (The card and pip sizes were selected in a poll of the members of Chiptalk.net, and are designed for use on a large, 10-seat poker table.)
When my contact at Liberty called me to say the cards were in production, I was stressing the details. Her response was simple. "You've got to see these cards!" she said. The cards turned out even better than we expected, and sold quickly on Chiptalk, where member reviews were very positive.
Features:
Unique new full-bleed boarderless back design in custom colors featuring the Key West Resort & Casino logo, end-on-end.
Poker size cards with Liberty Jumbo pips
Imperial Linen coated cardstock with matte finish in a beautiful tuck box with a "casino use" note area.
Custom "Key West Resort & Casino" ace of spades
CBJ