To Bicycle or not to Bicycle?

[BTimony]

Hi guys!

As some of you know, I've been working on putting together a novelty playing card deck of Monster Pin Up Girls. http://www.monsterpinupgirls.com/
I'm planning on launching the Kickstarter in October.
I got a price quote from Bicycle, and its a lot of money. the minimum run of 2500 decks would cost me about $7000.
I want to go with quality, Bicycle branded cards, but I'm not sure I can raise that kind of money. I'm also printing a hardcover art book that will bump up the asking price as well.
There's another site, makeplayingcards.com, that is a little more expensive per deck, but I can do a run of only 500 decks for around $3000.

What should I do? Go for quality, or price? Maybe aim for the budget price, with a Bicycle upgrade as stretch goal? I don't know. Thoughts?

Thanks!

Bobby Timony

[Eoghann]

Although USPCC (Bicycle is just a brand of theirs you pay extra for, United States Playing Card Co does all the printing) would be the first choice for many of us here, I don't see this deck being used for magic, cardistry, serious game playing or anything of the sort. If you're sole intention is a novelty deck, by all means go with MPC. MPC has greatly improved the quality of their products but is still quite a bit away from playing with the "big boys". They're not quite there yet.

I think many of us here can agree that taking into account the theme of the deck and the intended use for it, there's no reason to demand for a USPCC run, thus making your goal increase exponentially and reducing your chances of success. It's an attractive deck no doubt but it might lack the mass appeal necessary for a USPCC print run.

At any rate I'd suggest starting with a minimum MPC run and adding other printers as stretch goals.

[BTimony]

Thanks.
I emailed my Bicycle rep asking if it was possible to do a smaller print run. If not I'll go with MPC and have USPCC as a stretch goal.

[Mike Ratledge]

I got a price quote from Bicycle, and its a lot of money. the minimum run of 2500 decks would cost me about $7000.

There's another site, makeplayingcards.com, that is a little more expensive per deck, but I can do a run of only 500 decks for around $3000.

What should I do? Go for quality, or price? Maybe aim for the budget price, with a Bicycle upgrade as stretch goal? I don't know. Thoughts?

Seriously? USPCC quoted you that price for printing, or for decks with Bicycle logos? Just speaking from recent experience, unless you design a tuck with no features at all, with branding their price is going to come out right at $4 per deck unless you go way over that 2500 minimum, or $3.50 per without their logo, as in USPCC-made/printed but without their 'brand' logo. There is no such thing as a "one size fits all" quote from USPCC - at all - but I'm thinking about the minimum pricing that I have seen recently. If you go and get really fancy with the tuck box, you can easily add a buck (or two) to that also.

MPC can do decks at about Q500 for around $6 each including air freight shipping anywhere in the world - but no fancy stuff like foiled or embossed tucks, although you can get 100+ decks foiled for about an extra $1 to $1.50 per deck depending on exact quantity of decks, and it does add about a week to the processing. In general, once MPC has the artwork it's about two weeks before they ship and another week before you have it. The opposite side of the equation is that for USPCC/Bicycle brand is more like two months, and until very recently for almost 6 months they have been running way behind - as in about a month longer.

Realistically, USPCC is going to cost you a minimum of $10,000 for 2500 decks, and that's just production - not a cent in their for fulfillment (includes warehousing, packing, postage, shipping and handling) and that's average of about $6 per package (or per backer, in general - and depending on what you're offering as basic reward tiers and add-on items, it can easily go higher as well. There is a not well known alternative: "Apollo playing card co" of Dallas Texas, and they have recently started to produce and solicit 'custom deck' items like what USPCC does with their own 'custom decks' department. Apollo has one Heidelberg press, the de facto standard for printing cards, used by all except MPC of those that you are likely to have heard of. Until about 3 months ago, Apollo only did single and 2-color process decks for advertising until they bought that Heidelberg sheet-fed unit, which is a little ($3.5 million!) investment in growing their business. The thing people that haven't investigate Apollo don't know is that rather than the 2 months to 10 weeks average time between artwork submission and delivery of the decks is more like six weeks, assuming no problems with the artwork submitted. Frankly, any production facility is going to have those exact same issues if you submit something that's outside of their published limitations for specifications, including MPC and USPCC/Bicycle.

We've always tried to discourage posting prices here because they just move too often, but I wanted to post realistic numbers for right now. Of course, subject to change daily... I've heard there are changes coming up, but until they finalize things and announce them, it's not official and it's certainly not a done deal. It should make a difference in what you do with Bicycle/USPCC as your printer. For the time being that 2500 minimum is as low as they will go and has been for about four years now.

[BTimony]

The price quote came at a little over $2 per deck. Thats $5200, plus around $800 in fees. I tacked on another thousand for shipping and unexpected costs. Thats for unbranded cards. There's an extra cost for branding, but they didn't say what it was.

Thanks for the tip on Apollo. I just sent a request for a price quote.