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I'm readying myself for a letdown....

OnTheGrind wrote:I'm readying myself for a letdown....

Overhype? Never!

Curiosity is really killing me though...

Hahaha if you were expecting fairy dust and orges blood I've got bad news for you lol. But I do hope we will get to see images

Its almost midnight here now. Come on Mike, you said about june 1st. It's june 1st. Lol.

It's 7 am here in Central Europe...Lotrék should be up by now

Come on Lotrek, time to spill the beans. Mike has been driving us mad for quite some time.

I'll just go back to my corner now and suck on my thumb.

"Venexiana Gold"

Sorry, no elves' blood in the ink, nor stardust on the finish. Just gold foil on the back design.

IT'S SO PRETTY

Lotrek wrote:"Venexiana Gold"

Sorry, no elves' blood in the ink, nor stardust on the finish. Just gold foil on the back design.

All right, no elves' blood & no stardust is kinda disappointing. I'll settle for this though. :giant thumbsup:

Finally, the news is out!

That's A LOT of foil. And I can't believe nobody guessed a Venexiana Gold.

Put me down for one

Damn thats sick ! Thats a real foiled deck, not that exquisite bold nonsense ! Wait.. Are the cards already finished ?!?!

Did a quick search through this forum. Looks like MagikFingers was the first one to suggest foil on the cards. Preliminary congrats? On the other hand, other people went more in-depth like

Cbkimble wrote:Is it possible that it's a foil deck. Instead of pressing paper together, foiled is pressed together creating foil card stock.

wahl0108 wrote:Holographic foil on the back of the cards? Or maybe having three-year-olds coat them all in glitter? Or maybe even gold flecks...

Sher wrote:EPCC just came out with a deck that has foil on the backs of the cards... Maybe this deck will have foil on both the backs and faces?! But foil on the tuck has been done before so maybe that's not it...

ozfan30 wrote:The cards themselves are embossed and have foil, so they will look exactly like the back of the tuckcase

Quite a lot of people suggested foil on the back of the cards, but Mike never said they were right. I'm not sure how specific Mike wanted us to be when guessing o_o

Oh, and here's Lotrek's post for more info:

Lotrek wrote:Only 200 of these will EVER be produced. Not one more. 200 produced, 199 will be available. I think I deserve a deck myself, right?
These decks will NOT be a Kickstarter project. They will be available directly through my website somewhere around the 10th of Jun
The decks will be produced under my close supervision which will make them almost handmade.
That means that each card in the deck will have been examined by me during and after production.
Although It will come with a seal, it will NOT be sealed, as I want anyone to be able to hold it and look at it without destroying the seal. I will include a separate seal in the package and it will be up to you IF and WHEN the deck will be sealed.

Each deck will be $100, and max 2 per person. Here's the full post from Mike:

Mike Ratledge wrote:That being said, that's not the end of the whole project here: out of those 200 decks that will be available worldwide, UC members will have the "first right of refusal" for the initial 100 decks. To be fair, the odd numbered decks will be pre-sold here using a method that I haven't really perfected yet, but somehow you will be able to express your interest in them and reserve up to TWO decks (MAXIMUM per person or household) at the price of $90 for Lotrek + $10 for "Friends of UC" to help support your favorite place go talk about "All Things Playing Cards", your source for news and discussion about Cardistry, Magic and Playing Card Collection. If you buy one of these decks your name will also go onto the "Wall of Heroes" here on UC as a contributor in the "one-time" section. I'm obviously going to have to separate the list into those that have made a monthly financial commitment and those that made a 1-time donation. The 1-time donations will be dated from now on and "age out" after one full year of being on the UC "Wall of Heroes". Those of you that have or will make a monthly commitment will be on the "UC Supporters/Sustainers and everybody will have my eternal gratitude from taking this place from what it was before I bought it in mid-December last year to a whole other dimension!

Mike said $400 worth of decks go to the winners, plus Lotreks, so that means only 195 available

I have to say those look amazing. Never thought of a third venexiana deck. Not with dark venexiana coming out soon.

Is this going to be coming out before, with, or after dark venexiana?

oh wow, they look stunning.

Is there an uncut available?

Wow, that looks incredible

volantangel wrote:Damn thats sick ! Thats a real foiled deck, not that exquisite bold nonsense ! Wait.. Are the cards already finished ?!?!

No, the cards will be available on 30th of June. These are mockups that are actually inferior to the finished product.

OnTheGrind wrote:Mike said $400 worth of decks go to the winners, plus Lotreks, so that means only 195 available

In fact my deck will be outside the series and not numbered. So there will actually be 201 produced and 200 of them will be numbered.

Yashi wrote:Is there an uncut available?

Unfortunately not.

Well, well, well...I go out for a bit and come back home to this...this...gorgeous deck! It's truly fantastic!

Eoghann wrote:Well, well, well...I go out for a bit and come back home to this...this...gorgeous deck! It's truly fantastic!

I've opened a new thread about this so as everyone can easily see the pics without searching in the sea of comments.

http://unitedcardists.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5151" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

and we're down to the final countdown: about a month until they are actually available. I know that you'll be working your butt off to get these done! No matter how it goes, it's not going to be easy and it's going to require some awfully tedious and time-consuming work to actually get them done. For those that asked, there will be one of them reserved for the two people that guessed the closest and first on the specifics: those two are Tom ("magikfingerz") and Shermaine Garcia. They get the two lowest numbered decks that Lotrek sells to us - us being the folks here at UC. We are also going to be putting some together for the moderators here as a gift from both of us to the people here that keep UC up and running and answer all the questions when I'm not available. Beyond that, it's strictly max 2 per person, and unless Lotrek changes his mind it's also going to be $100 per deck. I know that's expensive, but the old-world craftsmanship going into these first ever foiled decks is going to be time-consuming and I feel certain to some extent frustrating, to the point it will try his patience just to get them done! I purposefully let it go on past when Tom first guessed what was going on - pretty darned close but not exactly, so that nobody could really tell exactly when somebody "hit" the right combination. When Sher came so close it was time to call it off (the tormenting I was enjoying so much) I still let it run for about a week only to keep people from realizing just who was right. They have known since I told everybody that the truth was out there, but sworn to secrecy. I really enjoyed the game we got to play, and we'll do it again some time soon, but I surely don't expect to have another secret like this in my pocket any time soon... Just too cool, and as I had said during the first part of the clues, I had been told by several people that it just couldn't be done as recently as 6 months ago. Maybe it couldn't be done in mass production facilities, but Lotrek figured out how to do it in small very controlled conditions!

Just to be clear: embossing and holographic elements was indeed close - but not exactly what I needed to declare a winner. Tom came awfully close but not exact, but when I went back and looked at his guess I decided that he was just too close for it to be fair for me to only declare Shermaine to be the winner.

Thank you all for participating in this truly fun contest and guessing game, like I said we'll have to do it again some time soon!

Lotrek's lips are sealed about the method he used to make them. I'll wait to read his memoirs when he finally reveals it!

That or I fly to Greece and become his apprentice.

OK, I already did it myself, but in keeping with the tradition that we don't have two topics active about the exact same thing, please place further comments in the new thread here: http://unitedcardists.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=515" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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