Creating semi-professional cards for sale (NOT PROTOTYPE)

I heartily recommend the Guild of Blades POD service, so I have two thoughts:

First, consider whether your cards need to be half-sized. The fact that your prototype uses half-sized cards isn't really an answer. Is it functionally essential?

Second, have you asked the guys at Guild of Blades whether they can do smaller cards? I know they print books covers and box wraps in different sizes, so their equipment must be somewhat adjustable.

Kyle

Depending on your schedule our company is going to start POD card printing (we have a print shop set up n house for our own games we're producing) and non-standard sizing isn't an issue at all.

We utilize a laser die cutter, so it's a fairly easy setup to make non standard sizes.

Depending on your timing requirements we might be able to help out - otherwise as suggested above Guild of Blades does some really nice work.

We haven;t gotten all the info together yet on where we are at, so I can;t give much specifics - but would be willing to chat about it and your needs - LMK. Feel free to PM or email me.

Cheers.

-Jason

you might want to print them on business cards if it works well for the size. Some print stores can do this size or I think there are preperforated business card sheet that you can print yourself.

It's an option I have been considering myself if "Bureau en gros/staples" cannot cut the cards the size I want.

I suggest asking the 'board game community' / the 'people', by which I assume you mean the players of the game.

Assuming you've been (or will be) playtesting, you could give the playtesters an open question (what do you believe is a reasonable price for the game in the current state) or use multiple-choice (In what price range would you place the game? A: $5-10, B: $10-15, C: $15-20, D: $20-25). Afterwards find out the motivation for their answers. You can make a lot of guesses and ask peoples opinion on the pricing, but in the end it's the players that will buy the game.

People do expect a different, lower quality from boutique games (see, doesn't that sound better than "homemade"? :D). One of my favorite games is Tahuantinsuyu, which has components of the quality that you're talking about, and it (along with other similar quality games from Hangman games) sold just fine. Sure, people complained a bit about the component quality, but since the game was really solid, the complaints were well tempered and didn't stop people from buying it.

If you've got a very fun, solid game, you're probably just fine.

Hello

We are offering POD services for cards - cards of essentially any size since they're laser cut. We can also offer player mats in several materials, and we have a lamination process that works on matboard, cardboard, thin MDF and plywood that can be used for player mats, info boards, playing boards, etc. We can also do traditional die cut cards for standard sizes.

Examples of products with POD cards and color boards laminated onto matboard would be in Rocks for Sale.

So now we're not all wood (parts) all the time, but all game parts all the time.

Guild of Blades is still active. I recently made a new order with them, and I got an e-mail today telling me the cards are in the mail.

Given other responses in this thread, it looks as if there are several print shops that are now able to do POD or small run cards.

Sure, Ryan. That was not the e-mail I was using.

Thank you and congrats for such a success in your business!

Regarding square or odd shaped die cut cards. We can do them, but it necessitates a client buying a cutting die for them. Dies run from $300 to $350. We could, potentially, buy tha die ourselves for the right sized order, and then make it available for us to other clients, but quite frankly, the right sized order for such is likely around $2K. Otherwise, whena client buys a die, that die is theirs to use exclusively since they would be paying for it.

That is how the box industry handles requests for specialized shaped boxes which require newly built dies. We're taking a page from their playbook since it simply doesn't make economic sense for us to front the cost for custom dies for POD orders since the business volume would rarely recover the cost of the die.

Thanks,
Ryan
GOB Retail