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

I have posted, in my "How I Started This Addiction...Collection" thread/topic, how I ended up collecting playing cards.

It's an unusual hobby - not one you grow up hearing about, like coin collecting or stamp collectiong, so - how did YOU start?

I started back in October after deciding "I really should get into this KickStarter thing"... went on the website and looked under the "Design" section and saw one of the KickStarter "Staff Picks" point to the Pedale Design Deck, which lead to the discussion section and posting which led me here to this site. One month later, I'm here and 50+ decks into it. I have nothing compared to some of the folks on here though... their collections are simply magnificent...

Yeah, I was passed a kickstarter link too, to a deck of cards. I really liked the look of them so I browsed Kickstarter for more, then kind of started ambling around the net, picking up decks of cards as I go.

growing up in the 70s, my grandmother and my father would both head to reno on occasion. they'd bring back decks of cards for me and my sister. never though much about it then, but my grandmother always had decks of cards around her house as well. my father worked for the Great Northern and later the Burlington Northern railroads as a carman (non locomotive rolling stock mechanic)...and he was always bringing home the different railroad decks. (he collected railroad stuff and had a large collection of company/corporate rail decks...no idea what ever happened to them...wish i had them though.)

we never really played card games growing up...me and my sister just played with the cards. and i remember loving Bees. bikes and hoyles and arrcos weren't my thing. But, i took every Bee deck i could get...and basically destroyed them: in the spokes of wheels, thrown around, ripped up, drawn on, folded and mutilated, used as book marks, used to hold dollops of hobby glue, or to smooth and feather hobby or word working puttys...

but thats what i remember...loving Bees. how they looked and felt...they were durable, felt good in your fingers, and they looked awesome! they were what cards should be.

then i got older and forgot about cards. i dont gamble and i dont have the manual deftness for shuffling a deck well...let alone proper cardistry. so, playing cards were something i didn't think about

then a few years ago, i was bored (and probably drunk) and started looking up playing cards one night. I was surprised there were so many custom decks. I was also surprised that USPCC owned all the brands i remembered. buying a few decks to mess around with was cheap and fun. and i started buying. and i keep buying. just one or two of each deck i see that i like. one to open and mess around with and one to just put up in wall displays.

and you know what...i still like Bees the best!



You know what i really want, a dream deck pandering to my love of Bees... while the Coterie deck is amazing, I'd really love a custom Bee deck with french R, D, V ranks. K,Q,J is done to death. oh well, I'll just have to keep buying decks till the perfect one comes along


also...this is my first post here. I'm one of those dirty lurkers that just checks in daily and reads whats new from the shadows

MJF wrote:I started back in October after deciding "I really should get into this KickStarter thing"... went on the website and looked under the "Design" section and saw one of the KickStarter "Staff Picks" point to the Pedale Design Deck, which lead to the discussion section and posting which led me here to this site. One month later, I'm here and 50+ decks into it. I have nothing compared to some of the folks on here though... their collections are simply magnificent...

Uh-oh!

I've also been thinking "I really should check into this Kickstrarter thing".

When I do, I hope it does not Kickstart me into starting another collection!

My Susan is unhappy enough with the amount of space my cards take up in our apartment as it is!

neongrey wrote:Yeah, I was passed a kickstarter link too, to a deck of cards. I really liked the look of them so I browsed Kickstarter for more, then kind of started ambling around the net, picking up decks of cards as I go.

Funny how collections sort of sneak up on us, isn't it?

We look around one day and say "Hey, I've picked up several of these things now - I guess it's a colection!

For me, it was ten years between buying my first deck and my second (I still hav both, thirty (and forty) years later!

It wasn't until after I bought that second one that I started consciously combing through antique malls for more decks with custom courts. (this was decades before the web was around to make feeding a Playing Card Jones so much easier.

<Grumpyy Old Man>

Back in my day, we had to walk to antique stores to look for decks of cards.

Uphill!!


Both ways!!!

You young upstarts, with your fancy Interwebz and all, you don't know what real collecting is like!

[/Grumpy Old Man>

Damn.

It just occured to me that many of you might not even remember Dana Carvey's "Grumpy Old Man" character on SNL.

Or Dana Carvey, even. (he was Garth on Wayne's World.

...which was a recurring sketch on SNL (and later films).

Sad thing is, that was during my kids' SNL years.

My SNL years (the seasons I remember as being the funniest) were its very first years (1975-1976?), with John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin et al...

Okay, I'll just climb back into my exhibit at the museum, now.

Let's see... It all started when I went to California for a 1 month language course during the summer when I was 17. During my stay there, I purchased a Zippo lighter to bring back as a souvenir. Somehow I got the idea to learn tricks with it, so I found a DVD and learned almost all of the 50 tricks on it in a fairly short amount of time. I went in search of other things to flourish with, and I quickly found cards and the teachings of a certain german self-proclaimed guru of the "new artform" as well as Jerry "The Flourishman" Cestkowski. Tried buying some decks from local stores, but they never held up more than 5 minutes (especially for fans). I did some more research and soon after ordered my first Bicycle and Tally Ho decks from USA. Not sure exactly when the actual collecting started, but I remember one of the first custom ones I bought was Ellusionst's Black Tiger deck. The rest, as they say, is history

RSLancastr wrote:
We look around one day and say "Hey, I've picked up several of these things now - I guess it's a colection!

Yeah, that was mine too. I grew up playing card games but no one I know at the moment is much interested. I picked up about a dozen different solitaire games looking for games involving more skill than luck. I had to replace the decks I use a couple of times and started looking at the cards more. Local thrift stores had some interesting decks from world travellers, online was even better, and I was hooked.

A friend of mine linked me to the Deck of Extraordinary Voyages Kickstarter, which I thought looked really cool. I found out there were more playing card Kickstarters, backed a few of those, and things kind of spiralled out from there, heh.

I´ve started collecting decks seriously about 1 1/2 years ago.
I´m a magician and i bought special custom decks for those special events like Halloween (the Karnival Decks in example) because they
fitted the theme.
I bought most times only 3 or 4 of the same special decks (not like today buying bricks etc.)
Man if i would just kept those Smoke and Mirror decks sealed instead of performing magic with them,destroying them...same for the SplitSpades Lions.
And as i said 1 1/2 years ago i started to collect the decks that i had used or even bought enough so that i could collect them sealed.
Yeah and now i´m at over 120 different decks.Would have been way more but the international shipping and customs are always a pain in the...you know what i mean

As a young lad I really liked magic and cards. I practiced tricks and liked to play around with them. Then, they got supplaneted by video games.

20+ year gap...

I was sitting around one evening reading my iPad and came across Deck One. I'd never seen a custom deck of cards before and my previous love of cards literally rushed back to life in an instant. I ordered those, along with some others and was instantly hooked.

I also started to look at the decks I had and quckly realized that I could design those things too. I had ideas that many people did not seem to think of, and I started playing around to see what I could do.

1 year later, my second deck is coming from USPC in about a week, I'll have 10,000 of my decks in circulation, and have shelves full of great decks and some unique items of my own creation.

I truly love it. Best move of my professional/creative life.

Encarded, how appropriate that your love of custom decks started with a deck named Deck One.

First off, I've always played cards. When I was a kid, I of course played Crazy8s and Go fish, then I started playing crib with my family.. then in my late teens... Euchre, Poker, Blackjack, Asshole, etc..

Well... In Sept-Oct of 2009, I came across a couple decks of cards in a wholesale store ...that I thought were really cool looking.
They were the Bicycle Limited Edition Series 1, and the Bicycle Guardians...






I had never seen anything like them, so I picked them up to use during my poker games. My friends loved them! and so did I.
I wanted to see what other people thought of them, so I went on the net to find out what people were saying. After watching a review, I realized that my Guardians deck was different from theirs.. no double backer.. etc.. Which led me to the T11 site... I was blown away. I had no idea that there were even more custom decks. I spent the day looking up other decks, which led me to the other monster... Ellusionist.

After about a week of repeatedly talking about the custom decks with my wife, she asked me to make a list of the decks I like.. and she would try to get me a couple for Christmas.

Christmas morning came, and I was BLOWN AWAY by what my wife gave me... She picked up EVERY deck I asked for, and had a friend make an amazing display box for the 24 decks!!!
(I took these photos the day after Christmas)














I have an amazing wife!
I continued buying decks here and there, then in September of 2010 I stumbled across UnitedCardists... and then my collection exploded! I can't believe it's only been 3 years since I picked up those first 2 decks...


CBJ


BTW.. if anyone was wondering why my Guardians didn't have a double backer... it's because the direct-retail version (the one with the big bar code on the back of the tuckbox) didn't include that.

Grandpa and Grandma belonged to the elk club. They could go and play games and drink with the other oldsters when we went camping or traveling and many times I would stay in their trailer. But when they came back sometimes they would have a new deck.
One particular deck really looked amazing and gothic(no clue what it was) and I started grabbing them when I could.

i am really heavy into sleight of hand card magic. i used to go through 2 decks a week when i didnt know how to take care of my decks. It didnt take long for me to start buying bricks instead of single decks. If you enjoy card tricks especially sleight of hand i dont think it takes that long for you to start collecting cards. Not really collecting but to stock up on cards that you like.

A very practical genesis to a collection. Twiscold!

-RSL