Playing Card Magazine

[rjtomlinson1977]

I know there's a lot of great blogs and forums about playing cards but I was wondering if there's a market for a print magazine about playing cards? I know print magazines are becoming less and less popular due to the internet but from a collectors stand point I would think you would want a hard copy of articles about the card industry to save with your collections. I invision a quarterly (or bi-annual) publication that would be about upcoming cards, recently produced cards, indepth articles about the artists, press releases from card printers (USPCC, EPCC, MPC) and other various card related information.
Do you think there's a market for this kind of publication?

[volantangel]

Well whats going to be different from the information we can get off websites like UC, Kardify, Sparkz ? Unless theres a differentiating point that a print magazine can do and a online medium cannot, its gonna be hard to take off.

[rjtomlinson1977]

Like I said, there's a lot of great blogs and forums out there. But to me the biggest selling point is that an issue of a print magazine will be there 50 years from now unlike most blogs and forums. When those blogs and forums disappear (for example webistes like Myspace, Bomis, the Globe, etc all disappeared over time) that information is gone... forever. I have Life magazines that my great aunt saved from the 1940s. I can't even access my old myspace acount.
Other than that... a print magazine can have more exclusive content all in one location. As far as blogs and forums go... a print magazine would be a great place for them to advertise it for free. They contribute to the print magazine and not only would they get paid for their work but they can plug their blog at the end fo the article.

[Don Boyer]

There is a magazine that covers playing cards. It's called "Clear the Decks" and is the official magazine of the 52 Plus Joker Club. The magazine is released quarterly, is in black-and-white with color covers, but all of the images can be seen online in the full-color version appearing at askalexander.org, said version being freely accessible by all club members. Additionally, ALL issues going right back to the first one are available at askalexander.org as well. In recent issues, they've expanded their coverage to include modern decks as well as vintage and antiques. The information held in CtD alone is enough to justify the cost of a membership, which starts at $25/year and is discounted if you pay for two or three years in advance.

Memberships are available at 52plusjoker.org. Members of CARC at an adequately high-enough level have access to the issues through the askalexander.org database, in addition to dozens if not hundreds more different magazines on the topics of cards and magic.

[rjtomlinson1977]

There is a magazine that covers playing cards. It's called "Clear the Decks" and is the official magazine of the 52 Plus Joker Club. The magazine is released quarterly, is in black-and-white with color covers, but all of the images can be seen online in the full-color version appearing at askalexander.org, said version being freely accessible by all club members. Additionally, ALL issues going right back to the first one are available at askalexander.org as well. In recent issues, they've expanded their coverage to include modern decks as well as vintage and antiques. The information held in CtD alone is enough to justify the cost of a membership, which starts at $25/year and is discounted if you pay for two or three years in advance.

Memberships are available at 52plusjoker.org. Members of CARC at an adequately high-enough level have access to the issues through the askalexander.org database, in addition to dozens if not hundreds more different magazines on the topics of cards and magic.

Thanks for the info. Good to know there's a magazine out there.