Professional Card Printing 101

Some folks use blue. It's a central adhesive layer. The purpose of the process is three fold. First and foremost, the colored center is important for high stakes poker. If you hold most standard card stock up to the light you can see through it in part. The colored center makes the cards more opaque. Sometimes not entirely. It varies from stock to stock.

Outside of super high stakes poker, this is somewhat overrated. Most CCGs have 100% ink coverage on their card backs and they have complex card designs with small text on the front. Particularly when they are held normally in a player's hand it's almost impossible to see through a card even printed on plain stock of any real thickness.

The second purpose of this laminating process is to make sturdier cards. Laminated cards tend to fray at the edges somewhat less than plain one-ply stock. This is important to casinos where the decks are going through a Shufflemaster machine hundreds of times in a row. For games where the cards are drawn and played on an as needed basis (like Talisman) this is not that important. It's more important for games where the cards are held in hand. However, for CCGs 90% of serious players play with card sleeves, and so fraying rarely happens from shuffling, although you might get some fraying of an unlaminated stock if you frequently sleeve and unsleeve the cards.

Lastly, and this may vary from person to person, I think laminated stocks have better spring to them than unlaminated stocks. This is due to the "memory" built into a laminated card. It wants to return to its original position. A laminated card is less likely to "break the back" (i.e., split the ink and show the underlying card layer) if it is bent as compared to an unlaminated stock (which is more likely to break the ink and be unable to resume the original uncreased shape of the card).

Although not mentioned by you, varnish on the card surface can protect the card face and back (and therefore prevent distruction of card art through rough handling). This is very important for card backs in high stakes games so that they aren't appreciably marked through handling. Additionally, varnish can make the cards slip and slide smoothly over each other. Many game players are particular about the way that cards "handle".

Cards also come in a flat finish or a linen finish. The linen finish is the threaded exterior of a Bicycle playing cards. Most CCGs are printed on untextured cards.

CCGs tend to be printed with a matte finish (to avoid glare). Normal playing cards are printed with a satin or gloss finish.

Cheaper than what?

Some casino grade cards are SUPER SUPER expensive stock. They are thicker than Magic the Gathering (MTG) cards, they are more opaque than MTG cards, and they have special finishes.

In general, however, for a typical playing card stock it is about a wash between MTG and linen finish cards. It varies from vendor to vendor a bit.

Depends on printing technology. If you want to prototype something, get a nice C2S (coated two sides) stock, maybe around 12 or 14 point. Send them through a high end laser printer. Do NOT send most coated stocks through inkjet printers. Inkjet printers require that the stock be coated with a fixative gel that the ink seeps into. You need special paper. If you put C2S stock into an inkjet you might as well pour hot chocolate in your printer, because the ink will not stick to the stock. It will smear all over the paper and the rollers.

For prototyping, using digital print on demand technology is the only way to go.

For professional print runs, there are card shops that print custom cards in smaller quantities. They frequently charge up to $6.00 per deck of 52 bridge-sized cards, and have minimum orders of 250+ decks. That's gonna make your game wildly expensive for traditional sales, although maybe direct sales will work. Also, some of these folks are not set up to print CCGs. They really are setup to print standard playing cards with custom backs. The prices they quote you often will not include the costs of making images and plates for custom faces and so the prices of the cards can be MUCH higher than they list on their websites. Also, not all may be printing on true playing card stock. Many are printing on vanilla C2S found in copy shops.

Delano Services, Yaquinto, and Carta Mundi are some of the more serious print houses. At higher volumes Yaquinto is probably a little cheaper for printing just the cards and shrink wrapping them. At almost all volumes, particularly at the 3000+ deck volume (relative small for a CCG run), Carta Mundi is best. This is really true if you need custom card boxes (tuck boxes) and display boxes (Point Of Purchase [POP] displays holding multiple decks). Carta Mundi is MUCH cheaper at producing boxes.

Figure $4000 to $7000 for your decks at Carta Mundi (maybe 3000 to 5000 decks, depending on # of cards per deck, etc.).

Tuck boxes, etc. OUCH. The price can double unless you are at really high volumes.

A "point" is a thousandth of an inch, if I'm not mistaken. It's the paper's caliper or thickness. It's also called a "mil".

Other common measures in the business are "pounds". This is how much 500 press sheets of the paper weighs. A press sheet is just what it sounds like, its a sheet that you'd normally put through a printing press. Press sheet sizes vary, but figure around 17" x 22" as an example. So 20 pound copier paper says that 500 press sheets of the stuff weighs in at 20 pounds.

Another measure is "gsm", which is "grams per square meter". That's a measure of paper density. Figure like 11 point playing card stock or 300 gsm stock are what CCGs are printed on.

Be careful throwing around that term. Lamination means making a composite out of layers. Regarding playing card stock, it means, most commonly, creating a multi-layered stock that has an adhesive layer in the middle.

If you mean "varnished" that's an exterior coat. Varnish your cards. If you want to know what an unvarnished card looks like go to your drug store and buy the cheapest kid's deck in the store. They are generally coated on only one side. The other side is uncoated matte finish stock. It looks really ugly after about one pizza eating session, where the cards start looking more like napkins than playing cards.

For prototyping and certain types of manufacturing, you can also laminate the cards. And there I mean applying clear adhesive laminating film (like at an office supply store) to your cards. If you use a thinner unfinished or C2S stock and laminate it both sides you can get a result that feels and looks a lot like a playing card. It is incredibly durable. This is somewhat expensive but great for prototyping. Find the point (or mil) thickness of the laminating film. Multiply it by 2 (front and back) and then add the point thickness of your paper. You want to hit around 12-14 with this method.

I think you could produce fairly professional looking products this way "in house", but it would be somewhat expensive.

That you have a clue. If you don't, then go to Yaquinto or Delano Services. Delano has a "sister" company that does full service game design consulting. Yaquinto can do this to. I'd stay away from Carta Mundi if you have no clue about what's going on. They won't cheat you, but you may not get what you want.

Know about the number of colors you want, card dimensions (stick to poker or bridge if you can). Know if you want a tuck box for each deck. Know how many cards per deck. Know if you want display boxes. Know if you want shrink wrapping. Know if you want rulebooks inserted. Ideally know about the type of varnish you want.

Some services can be paid to look over the product, but you pay more for it. Sometimes you need to make images and plates. They are EXPENSIVE. Don't make cards with an offset printer unless you have a finished product. Make a prototype on a digital print on demand machine.

Varies. 53 to 56 are common for people who do traditional playing cards. 52 cards, plus 1 or 2 jokers, plus 0 to 2 advertising cards. Varies by printer. Some are inflexible and are ONLY set up to produce decks in a given size.

Check with your printer.

Sometimes that's true.

Ask your printer. Sometimes the pro card printers (as opposed to mom and pop printing shops) have templates for card sheets, card boxes, etc.

Find a printer before laying out the card sheets.

Use your favorite graphics software, Adobe InDesign, Quark, etc.

Ask if you need to use Cyan Magenta Yellow blacK (CMYK) colors instead of Red Green Blue (RGB, the standard for your monitor. Many require you to know how to do color separations. If you don't know what the term is, Google it.

Delano goes as low as 500. Really, however, the bulk of the cost is the setup and the plates. Print 3000 if you are even going to be bothered with printing 500.

Stick with the people I mentioned above if you are doing a serious print run. There are cheaper printers, but these are known guys.

I don't know if I qualify as an expert, and hopefully I haven't spread too much false information.

Lee Valentine
Veritas Games

Thank you!

Verify my usages. Since I'm not a printing professional I may have gotten some things wrong.

I can post a huge list of printers, accessory manufacturers, etc.

Only thing is, except for going overseas (China supposedly has some great printers, although I don't speak Chinese and don't know if the ultra-cheap ones speak English), of everywhere I checked, Carta Mundi was by far the cheapest for lower quantities that were in tuck boxes and display boxes. Going almost anywhere else is laughable unless:

a) you need a lot (Yaquinto and Delano are more competitive at big quantities)

b) you don't need them boxed (everyone was pretty competitive for shrink wrapped decks only)

c) you need lots of guidance and you are willing to pay for it (in which case Delano's sister company can help out, Yaquinto is good, and maybe Printing Productions)

d) you need a board game with card components (Carta Mundi does ONLY cards, so if you need a full service printer, Carta Mundi is not for you)

e) you just want a small quantity of decks in standard sizes (like 56 cards or something) and don't care if the price is good enough for re-sale; in these cases a number of smaller card printers can make you decks for $6 each in small quantities if you shop around.

We're trying to get an art license for one of my game designs right now.

If we can, then we're going to press. In doing so, I had to take on a modern version of the labor of Hercules to find out the info I wanted to know about the process.

I feel no need to put others through what I had to go through.

Lee