Still don’t know CARDLAUNCHER? I can’t believe!
Just a few days ago, CardLauncher, the new Playing Cards crowdfunding platform, was launched.
Cardlauncher has been founded by Mike Ratledge and a group of people “Passionate about playing cards” in order to give the creators a new alternative to produce their decks and the community a new crowdfunding place specialized in Playing Cards. I talked about CL in detail some weeks ago.
For the grand opening, a great marketing strategy, many giveaways and four fantastic campaigns have been offered to the card fans all over the world. Lower shipping quotes, combined pledge levels and the possibility of winning fantastic gifts are just a few of the surprises and good moments CardLauncher plans to give to followers and backers.
Apart from the four campaigns already running on CL (that I will talk about later), two more exclusive decks are on play used as gifts for randomly selected backers in this opening. One is the Nº17 deck, the very first of the new Stockholm17 brand just created by Lorenzo Gaggiotti for this special event. The other is Scarlet Pearl, a deck created by the magician and blogger Eli Retschlag. Both are quite limited and they are really nice. You can see my own photo of both decks so you can envy me a little bit :) Both decks can also be purchased at The Deck Refinery, the place next to CardLauncher dedicated to playing cards consulting.
The “four aces” of this launch are the campaigns of four decks well known for the card followers:
- Dark Venexiana: created by the great Lotrek. After the success of the Venexiana deck and the revolutionary Venexiana Gold, this is the dark version requested by his fans for a long time. Although there will be a standard version of this deck, the one offered in CardLauncher is the Limited Edition, made by EPCC using their Master Finish and with an edition of 2,000 decks numbered on the seal. The original edition (unlimited) will be launched separately or offered as an add-on.
- Can-he-diana: created by Philip DaCosta, and inspired by Canadian cultural elements, this deck was launched some time ago through Kickstarter and depicted on Max Playing Cards. Now, with a much more limited edition, and printed by Make Playing Cards, the deck is already funded and offers three different tuck cases and back designs: original, pattern and solid. Only 144 decks of the pattern and solid backs will be printed. Phil is also working on getting approval for the diptych jokers for the limited decks so there will be an update soon.
- Good Deck: created by Giovanni Meroni, this is the mirror of his Evil deck, winner of the Discourse Deck Design Contest, where part of the prize consisted on printing the deck using EPCC. Good Deck shares the same printer, the same inspiration (good and evil) and the same design style with his Evil Deck, but depicting the good ones. Many add-ons and stretch goals are involved in the campaign, including prototypes, signature editions, limited edition decks, …
- Brimstone: perhaps some of you remember the Brimstone deck, the very first one of a series that unfortunately finished with the Quicksilver edition and carried Circle City Cards to the extinction. Gambler’s Warehouse bought the designs and releases two different versions of the original deck printed by the USPCC under Bicycle brand: the original re-released deck in red with gold foil tuck and the Limited deck in aqua color with gold foil tuck and metallic gold ink on faces. Only the Limited Edition is offered in CL at this moment.
These four decks are just the beginning of CardLauncher. Less than three weeks to finish they need some more fund to become reality. I sincerely wish CL team a fantastic journey and a lot of successful deck campaigns.
Max Playing Cards will be aware of anything new and will keep you informed. In the meanwhile, register in CardLauncher, visit its projects and do not hesitate to make your pledges. They have worked a lot to offer good pledge combinations and good shipping quotes. Find yours and begin your CardLauncher collection.
Good luck!