UnitedCardists.com - The forum for Cardistry, Magic, Custom Decks and All Things Playing Cards.

Yeah that's fine, I wasn't trying to start anything, my apologies.

jerichoholic wrote:Yeah that's fine, I wasn't trying to start anything, my apologies.

Nothing much, I was just mentioned how many resellers were promoting sales of this deck, especially in comparison to other decks.

jerichoholic wrote:Nothing much, I was just mentioned how many resellers were promoting sales of this deck, especially in comparison to other decks.

Well when was the last time you have seen a self-funded deck (that actually looks good) that is independent of the big 3/4/5 (heck is there still a fixed number?) I recall this happened with the bankroll decks as well.

Yeah it did

I have to say I'm so impressed by the Virts. They're keeping their 2015 deck priced at $9.95 when they easily could've sold the same deck for $14.95+. I love that they want to use this to further promote cardistry and for this deck to be a user deck and not a collector-only deck to gather dust on some shelf or drawer. And to make sure that anyone who wants a deck can actually get one (a refreshing change from the uber-limited Kickstarter crap that only allows a lucky handful to get a deck - usually by charging an arm and a leg), they're giving away 1 deck for FREE for 5 days after they launch to celebrate their 10th anniversary in cardistry for all who want a deck. No strings attached except for shipping. Kudos to the Virts!

Well is just a recolor. And i'm pretty sure they have at least 20 000 decks and they are giving for free some of them so this pretty much confirm that.
Not branded no seal, no bicycle courts all that drop the price for printing them. 15$/deck it will surprise me a lot for selling you 3rd time same deck.
Ellusionist sell their decks at 7$ (branded and sealed Tiger,Shadow,Ghost with possible discounts) , so 10$ should be normal.

AceOfHearts wrote:Well is just a recolor. And i'm pretty sure they have at least 20 000 decks and they are giving for free some of them so this pretty much confirm that.
Not branded no seal, no bicycle courts all that drop the price for printing them. 15$/deck it will surprise me a lot for selling you 3rd time same deck.
Ellusionist sell their decks at 7$ (branded and sealed Tiger,Shadow,Ghost with possible discounts) , so 10$ should be normal.

Here's what the Virts said in their email:

Many people have asked us time and time again to increase our deck run size, but our answer remains the same; the Virtuoso deck is both expensive and time-consuming to produce. We too would love to produce more decks than we currently do, but as a small team, we don’t have the resources to do so just yet, and prefer to prioritise quality over quantity.

...over 20,000 people showed interest in the SS15 Virtuoso deck after Air Time went viral. While we’re obviously thrilled, we’re also worried that this might affect you. Reason being...we don’t have 20,000 decks to sell. Quite a lot less actually.

So no, they're not printing 20,000 decks. Having said that, they're definitely printing more than 5000 due to the pricing and giveaways. I agree that $10 should be normal for a deck like this: USPCC-made, fully customized courts, pips, backs & Jokers, upgraded matte stock tuck case. But the demand for these decks generate aftermarket sales 3-5 times that amount, so yeah, I think they could've easily gotten away with pricing these at $15, but they didn't. Throw in the fact that they usually offer free cardistry videos (yeah, I know this is of little use for strictly collectors, but it is of value to their target demographic, which is cardists). So if you get only one deck, plus your free deck, this in essence makes your cost to buy at a little below $5 per deck plus shipping. Great value anyway you cut it.

Let's not compare these to decks from Ellusionist, either. Totally different economies of scale. I bought Black Ghost decks from E 5 years ago at $7 per deck plus shipping, and I can still get them today at $7 per deck plus shipping. They're not selling out anytime soon. Why? Because E probably printed over 50,000 decks over that period of time. When you print as many decks as E, you get volume price breaks. The first two versions of the Virtuoso decks sold out within a week of release, they'll never be sold again.

Well what a pleasant surprise, from their wording im guessing they printed about 10k. And im sure quite a large percentage already went out to retailers. SO i wouldnt count on these lasting even 5 days and their video has made it huge, random people might just grab a deck or two. Im glad i already have my decks so i wouldnt have to get in with the crowd =)

Anyone in the states have these for preorder?

ofc they will say they don't have many decks, that way more people will be forced to buy. It's business after all. They already sold to 3 retailers at least 500 decks overall. Free decks is again marketing. Nobody knows how many free decks they will trow, maybe 10, maybe 50 or 100. Won't be much.
Somewhere somebody said E print like 15k-20k and they are making way more for 5y.
If this deck is printed in the same quantiles as E then i'm right.
limited or not , they are getting same price from uspcc. Asking more for 3rd deck which is recolor.. "too hard to produce" - - yeah right, "never to be printed again.. never.. well maybe new color next year"..

AceOfHearts wrote:E printing 50 000 decks? rofl.

50 000 decks in 5 years? How is that laughable? I wouldn't be surprised if it was more.

MagikFingerz wrote:

AceOfHearts wrote:E printing 50 000 decks? rofl.

50 000 decks in 5 years? How is that laughable? I wouldn't be surprised if it was more.

I think it's pretty good odds that it's much more than that.

Also this isnt a straight out recolour, there are changes to the design of the courts. Plus they gave out 75 free decks on the private launch no questions asked, wont be much ? I really dont know.

Plus yes, the bigger ones print wayy more than them, that i assure you.

And I assure you uspcc gave them the lowest price possible, just like the one for "biggest one"price would be the same no matter if they want to print 20k or 55k. There is a minimum $$ that uspcc cant go below.

AceOfHearts wrote:And I assure you uspcc gave them the lowest price possible, price would be the same no matter if they want to print 20k or 55k.

Hahaha you couldnt be more wrong =)

Edit: Plus if you take into account, video/tutorial production cost, design cost (please dont tell me your black ghost took more design time than this.), website cost etc. 20k vs 50k+ makes a big difference.

volantangel wrote:

AceOfHearts wrote:And I assure you uspcc gave them the lowest price possible, price would be the same no matter if they want to print 20k or 55k.

Hahaha you couldnt be more wrong =)

All right proove it

AceOfHearts wrote:

volantangel wrote:

AceOfHearts wrote:And I assure you uspcc gave them the lowest price possible, price would be the same no matter if they want to print 20k or 55k.

Hahaha you couldnt be more wrong =)

All right proove it

Its simple actually. for any production. The cost always splits down into two parts, fixed cost + variable cost.

Fixed cost = printing plates, set up cost, proofing cost, etc. Variable cost = paper + ink + coating.

While there is a minimum price the variable cost cannot go below, the fixed cost just gets divided by whatever the print run is. So dont tell me that the prices are the same

So you are saying if they want 20k price X, If they want 30k price <x , if they want 75k price <<x and this goes forever until 0.00$ for fixed cost? Hard time to believe.

AceOfHearts wrote:So you are saying if they want 20k price X, If they want 30k price <x , if they want 75k price <<x and this goes forever until 0.00$ for fixed cost? Hard time to believe.

Erm it only goes down to zero if number of decks tend toward infinity. I don't know how hard that is to believe, basic math yes ?

And also you are speaking as if 75k is your top number, if the numbers in this link are any indication : http://www.quora.com/How-many-new-decks ... -each-year

A single casino goes through 54k decks a month based on all of the lower bound numbers. And quite easily double of that.

AceOfHearts wrote:And I assure you uspcc gave them the lowest price possible, just like the one for "biggest one"price would be the same no matter if they want to print 20k or 55k. There is a minimum $$ that uspcc cant go below.

Asking for proof when you don't even provide any. Rather silly . We'll never really know any better than E or the Virts on how many decks they printed or how much they paid of the production of their decks nor the processes involved with the production and selling of their decks.

Anyway, you seem to have the impression that by producing a ridiculous amount of decks you can get "cheat" (for the lack of a better word) USPCC by having to pay zero fixed costs, and thus, making you a winner. If I got it right, you're forgetting to factor in the profit that they make for services rendered. Fixed costs + Variable costs only equate to one's costs of goods sold. So even if fixed costs reach zero (e.g. $00.00000000001) after the production of 100,000+++ decks, you're still going to have to pay them for whatever profit scheme they have in place.

Hello,

Just wanted to share that we got the GO from the Virts to ship the Virtuoso Spring Summer 2015 deck today so our customer could get those the soonest after the official release date.

Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered !

Julien.

Early bird official release time: March 29th @ 9pm EDT.

Edit: corrected. Thanks shermjack for pointing that out.

I believe that Sunday March 29, 9PM EDT is for early birds...the official launch time is later

Aw man, I have a futsal game on that time. Hopefully they won't sell out by the time I get back.

The website isn't even loading for me. Guess they didn't get around to fixing the server problems they mentioned in the email. Anyone willing to let me piggyback their order in case it doesn't load when the time comes?

1 hour early bird delay.

Additional problems with web site.

Additional delay of unspecified length...

So much for early bird...

JSELS wrote:So much for early bird...

...but who wants a worm, anyways?