Re: Something Wicked This Way Comes part 4! On CL 24-August

[Godzillian]

A Chromographix deck sounds super-fancy. Does Mike or anyone else have a picture of what a Chromographix deck might look like??? I know it's supposed to be more colorful, but I would be interested in seeing the difference between a regular deck and a Chromographix deck.

or I can wait until these UC ones are released...

[MagikFingerz]

I would have naturally assumed that with today's technology you would be able to get any colour you like already, with as much detail and overall colour as you like.

I guess new technology is not necessarily cheap to mass-produce. Cost-effectiveness and all that.

[Norbie]

I would have naturally assumed that with today's technology you would be able to get any colour you like already, with as much detail and overall colour as you like.

I guess new technology is not necessarily cheap to mass-produce. Cost-effectiveness and all that.

USPCC printing technology isn't that primitive, is it?

[Mike Ratledge]

A Chromographix deck sounds super-fancy. Does Mike or anyone else have a picture of what a Chromographix deck might look like??? I know it's supposed to be more colorful, but I would be interested in seeing the difference between a regular deck and a Chromographix deck.

or I can wait until these UC ones are released...

Well, when I announce who will be doing the UC2015 Annual Deck everyone here will have a duck, but we're still waiting on Grotesque decks to be shipped on the 3rd, so it will be a while, yet.

Chromografix™ deck? There are none - yet. I suspect that there will be some to show off here in a couple of weeks, but until then I will just show an excellent example of how one done in the 50's looked: (this is just a teaser, in my usual style, but it gives an idea)

It was indeed done on the 400gsm Chromalux™ paper made by Zander - now Metsabord.

[dazzleguts]

Mike, are these done with transparent colour for vibrancy and colour mixing? I noticed where the heart overlaps the hat it's gone dark.

[Mike Ratledge]

Mike, are these done with transparent colour for vibrancy and colour mixing? I noticed where the heart overlaps the hat it's gone dark.

To be honest, I don't know precisely how they were done by Dr Zander and his company, but I suspect that he likely bought the single 12-color Heidelberg press ever made, which sold for around $75,000 back in 1964. There was never another one made as far as I know. 12-color process for other lithographic purposes isn't that uncommon, but for playing cards it's unheard of. It appears that the colors were added one at a time, which in fact is how all cards are printed: for example using the modern-day Heidelberg press that sheets pass along a 6-station processing sequence where the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black and Sealants are added (in that order, I'm fairly certain). In any case, colors with printing are additive, as opposed to colors for visual representations which are subtractive (i.e. on your TV the Red/Green/Blue all on = White).

In today's money, that $75,000 is about $350,000 - which is about what you would expect to pay for a 12-station Heidelberg press (sheet fed), the roll fed ones like USPCC uses are about double that, simply because they are calibrated to produce 100's of decks per minute as opposed to dozens.

[Mike Ratledge]

Yes, Chromografix dates have to wait for a few months, but even without that one thing, now that we already doing very limited testing and modifications to the text, TOS, privacy policy, FAQ and things are ready - updated dates:

CardLauncher.com Beta Test!

CardLauncher.com Goes LIVE!

I reset the count-down clocks to August 19th and 24th, which I now think are realistic dates. (A week earlier)

Believe it or not, I got permission from the VP of Marketing of Altenberger und S Spielkertenfabrik (A.S.S. for short - for good reason) in Bavaria, allowing us to do a restoration of the Dondorf #1000 (Hundertjahrkarte) Centennial edition that broke the company. Dazz has mentioned that deck before, since it has a storied history and has already been reprinted, but never with the full color backs or even close to the resolution that we can these days. The faces are stunning, the original backs are awesome but would be awesomer using one of my least favorite words - with metallic gold ink in place of the flat gold color used originally in 1933.

Off-angle view of the original back:

Picture of a few faces from the original printing done in 1933:

and a couple of pix from the reprints:

Notice that the originals have "K/D/B" courts and reprints - even 1975 A.S.S. have contemporary English "K/Q/J".

[Eoghann]

Wow, this is a gorgeous deck I've been keeping my eye on for quite some time. How will you go about offering these modernized reprints?

[cosmicsecret]

Very cool! Will you keep the Original names for the Court cards? K (König) D (Dame) B (Bube) ...that would be AWEEEESOME!

[ecNate]

Very cool! Will you keep the Original names for the Court cards? K (König) D (Dame) B (Bube) ...that would be AWEEEESOME!

Agree, that would be best.

I am pretty excited about seeing this one happen. I love old Bavarian/German decks and the colors on these will be very cool to see. Nice project Mike!

[Mike Ratledge]

Very cool! Will you keep the Original names for the Court cards? K (König) D (Dame) B (Bube) ...that would be AWEEEESOME!

Agree, that would be best.

I am pretty excited about seeing this one happen. I love old Bavarian/German decks and the colors on these will be very cool to see. Nice project Mike!

The whole point is to make them exactly like the originals, with the exception (if we can, it's limited to 100 decks for the first test) of using gold metallic ink instead of the flat gold color. The cards themselves should be indistinguishable from the original with the exception of the metallic ink - if possible, which I am told that it is. I can't sell these things, and I understand that a lot of people are going to want them, so I'm thinking along the lines of doing 250 instead, maybe? They would have to be prizes, though - the agreement is that they are labeled "NOT FOR RETAIL SALE". We're supposed to get permission after we show them what we can do to go ahead and with a real reprint, though. I had hoped to have Chromografix done by December - in time for the holidays, but we might in fact have these 100 (250?) decks even sooner, as in maybe by the end of September, that's what I'm shooting for now. The first print will be half-way there, because doing a real restoration would require two or three months of work by an artist. The original scan I got is only 1000dpi and that sounds great, but truly - it's like trying to show a VHS movie on one of the newer UHD (4x High Def) TVs. I hope to have pictures of each face and back instead, which would make them much more "photorealistic". Having 250 of them would allow us to have a very controlled contest here on UC and pretty much insure that just about everybody that wants one can have one. I can't insure that at this point, I just know what I agreed to and what I'm getting from the VP or Marketing of A.S.S. division of CartaMundi - and already have permission to do a test Chromografix deck. Doing them digitally might me the best choice for the first decks, since they would be identical to the photo-quality pictures, essentially 16MP pix of a 9 sq in face each. That's still only 1.6MP per square inch, and it's a much higher resolution - but - it's still essentially saying "I'm going to print an UHD deck using VHS quality pix". Worth doing? Absolutely? Perfect, no - it's not, but we have time to do this test print in very limited numbers, and do the restoration card by card at the same time - hopefully complete in time to have them ready in time for the 'real' printing. The tucks for these? I consider it not to important, because we're printing it for the cards themselves, not to put up on a shelf and look at. They would have a Chromogrfix logo with "NOT FOR RETAIL SALE" on them, anyway, at least these first decks would have to.

[chach]

Beautiful cards to say the least, glad you're bringing them back (even if in such a limited number and that you can't sell them afterwards).

[Mike Ratledge]

I hope to form a bond with CartaMundi and maybe do a few others, like the Luxeskarte (Luxury) or l'Hombre decks. Those are even earlier, but if this goes well, I am pretty sure that we can get better results as we test even more. I don't own either one, but they come up on ebay.com once on a while. I saw l'Hombre last week.

[ddorn]

Cool, cool, cool!

[Mike Ratledge]

Today I received the entire deck faces from CartaMundi's A.S.Spielkartenfabrik division. Just to give everyone an idea of what we're shooting for - think about these with real gold metallic ink and then you're talking about where we are headed. For now, I'll just post the 4 cards from one 'court', actually 3 + Ace. I think everyone will agree that this is a worthy endeavor.

Here's what would be the J/Q/K/A of Hearts, or in German B/D/K/A of Hearzen of the Dondorf #1000 "Jubilee" or as we would say "Centennial" (Hundertjahrkarte in Tyakland/Germany):

Since they were printed in 1933 originally, they have a 'tax stamp' of the Third Reich "Deutsches Reich" (1933-1945) on the Ace of Hearts. In this case, regardless of popularity, theology or whatever - these will be as faithful a restoration as humanly possible, complete with every single thing exactly as done in 1933 with the exception that we will likely use gold metallic ink in place of the 'flat gold' color used for the roping/borders on the faces and backs that I've already shown. Even though we have very faithful 1000dpi scans done by true collectors and approved by the marketing director Gerd Matthes of Altenburger und Stralsunder Spielkartenfabriken (that's why almost everybody uses A.S.S.) it's still a starting point. If you haven't read my description elsewhere, just using these - no matter how good they look - would be like putting a VHS tape on display on a 4x or Ultra HIgh Def TV. It will take time to do right, and I am going out on a limb and saying a couple of months for one dedicated artist to take each and every one and lovingly reconstruct/restore every single card and the backs. You can see clearly that it says "Deutsches Reich Nr 2" on them, although that's simply impossible: that was from 1871 to 1918. I'm guessing that in early 1933 when these were made the "Third Goverment" as it can be translated loosely, they just didn't have tax stamps created just yet and used the older one.

I'm waiting for the tuck box to arrive - if we can find one. In this case, I'm not too worried about not having it, because per our agreement those boxes have to have a "Chromografix" logo on them that takes at least 25% of the front of those tucks along with "NOT FOR RETAIL SALE" in at least three languages: English, German and French. While I suppose that is fair enough for that first couple of hundred decks done using a digital press on 330gsm 'board' as they put it in Gemany or cardboard we would call it, I hope to reproduce it on a 10-color Heidelberg press which would be another world's first for us. Lotrek is pretty busy right now working on Venexiana Dark. Lorenzo is pretty darned busy working on getting Heretic fulfilled and will immediately after that be working on the UC2015/Stockholm Nr 17 deck, which we hope to have funding in October for delivery in December using a standard Heidelberg press in Dallas I found that apparently has been sitting there for a while without really doing much. Just for reference purposes, Heidelbergerfabrik in Germany is the world's largest producer of analog presses for chromolithography, commonly just said "litography" these days. The paper we're using is a 330gsm French casino grade black core bond paper made by Arjowiggins, the same used by Expert/Legends, MPC & Apollo Printing Card Co - who made the Black Legacy designed by 4PM Design. I need further comment from people that have those decks but I have used them for some time and find them to be every bit as good and handle as well as any deck I've seen. Comparing USPCC-made or "Bicycle" brand cards is apples and oranges because they are the only major producer of playing cards in the world that doesn't use Heidelberg standard lithographic presses, they use Heidelberg "web presses" that are manufactured to their exact specifications. I'm doing a little math these days to verify some of the claims I've seen lately, like the possibility that a single Heidelberg press of any kind might be able to produce 1 million decks in 24 hours - given that you could keep it belching out decks that fast without stopping that long. If you've ever seen the roll

[lolo]

Sample photo shows us that these cards are absolutly incredibles ! Amazing !