Trading Card Series - Need help with production strategy

sangfroid

Hi

I'm trying to create a small run of trading cards and I've never done anything like this before. I have my artists. I have my concept. I have someone who wants to help me fund it. And my next step is to put together a budget and see whether it is feasible enough to keep my backer in the game. I'm having a really hard time assessing my options for printers, packaging, etc., and I was hoping someone one here might have enough experience to give me some advise.

I can describe the project in a bit more detail if it would help.

Many thanks!

MrTLicious

I think you'll need to be more specific about what you mean by "assessing."

Are you having trouble comparing the trade offs between vendors? Do you need help getting quotes from vendors? Finding vendors? Completing a list of required tasks?

It's hard to tell how far along in the planning stage you are from the info provided.

Saying how big the project is might also be helpful (small could be anything from a few dozen to a few thousand).

The Ender

Are you looking to do a home-based production run using a conventional office printer, or were you looking to go to a professional printer?

sangfroid

Hi

Thanks so much for responding. By small, I'm talking on the order of 2,000 packs. 5 cards in each pack selected randomly from a series of 35-40.

A bit more about the project and where I'm coming from if it helps:
I'm a technology journalist. The series is intended to spotlight characters in one of the specific industries that I write about and each card will be a caricature of one celebrity in the field. So far, I've gotten a couple samples from printing companies. And I've tried to find separate companies that would collate and package.

I'm very comfortable being on the creative side of projects. But this is the first time I've ever really tried getting my hands dirty on the business side. My priority is on making the best possible product without going into the red. I don't care if I make no money at all off this.

I guess there are three things that would help from anyone who has done similar projects. As you said, a list of required tasks, would be incredibly useful. Also, I'd love to know if it's even feasible to do a run of this size and have it come out looking decent. Lastly, is it possible to forgo a professional printer and do everything at home? What does that look like?

Kharnastus

If you want a high quality product, you have to go find high quality materials to create them. It is going to be expensive though. if you get 9 cards to a sheet of 10.5 by 7 or whatever the standard paper size is and you use good quality gloss heavyweight paper... comes out to be 225ish sheets of high gloss heavy weight. Thats going to run you anywhere in the range of $250ish in my experience. throw in a margin for error and the cutting fee and I could see $300 for professional printing of that. Getting them packed is another thing altogether. I have no idea if consumers such as yourself have access to the packing machines and wrapping stuff to do this on a small scale but who knows. Sounds like fun though!

wrong_button

I can speak to a couple things on this one - as far as the home route, I'd pretty much advise against it. I'm not interested in starting a home printer war, I'm just speaking from more than a few years buying print. For pro quality stuff, I'd be looking at something offset print. Digital might be an option but I don't do enough of that to tell you if you can run a stock heavy enough for a card through. Plus finishing might be limited (as opposed to an offset run on two-sided gloss stock that you UV finish).

Your run size shouldn't be a huge deal, but you might have to shop around printers. When you have them quote it, ask about where your price break happens or at least have it quoted at a couple different quantities - your per-piece price may drop substantially enough that you may be able to up your run for a relative few dollars more.

I like to work with local printers that I've had a relationship with for years, but that's because the relationship is more valuable to me than the discount (because sometimes you need a favor :P ) to go to a giant internet printer, like Day2Dayprinting, Custom-TradingCards.com or someone like that. Someone like that might be a better option for you up front. These guys price break because they gang a bunch of jobs and run them at the same time. Down side being they aren't super flexible on paperstock, etc. and deal mostly with preset sizes/finishes, but for a preliminary run, they might do what you need. At worst you can at least get a rough idea of what your cost might be for production.

I'd still call a couple printers (bigger commercial printers - your local Quik-Copy is going to be a little outgunned on the project) to bid it out locally though once you spec out exactly what you need - a good sales rep can make the printing process a lot less painful for someone who hasn't done it before and help answer your questions. Having a few quotes to compare will help you see what you're really looking at.

The Ender

sangfroid wrote: »

Hi

Thanks so much for responding. By small, I'm talking on the order of 2,000 packs. 5 cards in each pack selected randomly from a series of 35-40.

A bit more about the project and where I'm coming from if it helps:
I'm a technology journalist. The series is intended to spotlight characters in one of the specific industries that I write about and each card will be a caricature of one celebrity in the field. So far, I've gotten a couple samples from printing companies. And I've tried to find separate companies that would collate and package.

I'm very comfortable being on the creative side of projects. But this is the first time I've ever really tried getting my hands dirty on the business side. My priority is on making the best possible product without going into the red. I don't care if I make no money at all off this.

I guess there are three things that would help from anyone who has done similar projects. As you said, a list of required tasks, would be incredibly useful. Also, I'd love to know if it's even feasible to do a run of this size and have it come out looking decent. Lastly, is it possible to forgo a professional printer and do everything at home? What does that look like?

A run of that scale is too large to reasonably do at home, in my opinion. I have done a lot of small scale card print runs using Avery's 3.5 x 2 format business card punch-out stock; you will spend a lot of time re-aligning and re-printing pages that didn't come out quite right and a lot of time punching even for only a few hundred cards. You're talking about 10,000 cards - it would be an absolute nightmare at best to get them printed to a standard that looks decent, much less get them all punched, cleaned, sorted & packaged.

I'd recommend finding a printer in town and getting a quote from them on the price & procedure.

Molybdenum

You could probably get a lot of useful advice from BGG.

Here's two of the applicable sub-forums:
http://boardgamegeek.com/forum/26/boardgamegeek/board-game-design
http://boardgamegeek.com/forum/36/boardgamegeek/do-it-yourself

and this topic in particular might be your best bet:
http://boardgamegeek.com/article/11437574#11437574

2,000 packs of 5 is a significant number of cards, but if you were to use a Print-On-Demand service like Artscow that breaks out to a bit more than 150 custom 54-card decks. (Most card printers allow 2 extra for jokers). Artscow in particular frequently has discounts, so if you want to avoid doing a big press run, want more agile proofs, or plan to print cards piecemeal over a period of time instead of ponying up for an enormous 10,000 batch, that might be the way to go.

sangfroid

Thanks everyone. This is very helpful.