Today, I want to tell you about my first fully handmade version of my "Coven of Corals" Erotic Tarot Card Deck. Specifically, I’d like to explain what I mean when I say I created a handmade card deck, as opposed to an industrially manufactured deck.
Background
As you may recall, I ran a crowdfunding campaign from May - June 2022 to collect funds for an industrially printed first issue of my deck. With this approach, my set would have been printed in a large number (say, 100 sets). But first, I needed the money to order such a big batch before I could actually sell them to you. Hence the crowdfunding.
Unfortunately, the campaign did not come to fruition - we discussed some of the reasons for that in the comment section of one of my instagram posts, and I am grateful for your feedback!I still believe in my art, though. And from what I can tell, you do, too. When I presented my Tarot card prototypes, e.g., at the Fetish Festival Cologne, people get really excited, and many of them wanted to know: „Where can I buy this set?"
So that’s why I am exploring new ways to manufacture and distribute my set. The first one being: Doing it myself. Which brings us straight to:
The Handmade Deck
I have been a full-time artist for two and a half years now and I learned to manually produce all kinds of stuff in my workshop, including, but not limited to:
- Postcards
- Fine Art Prints
- Stickers
- Paste-Ups for Street Art (allegedly), and even
- Books (even though I eventually switched to a print-on-demand model)
So why not playing cards, right?
Materials
In the following part, I will outline the materials I use to manufacture my card set, and list the material costs. Here is a snapshot of the materials I use for one card set consisting of 78 cards:
Depicted in the image are the following items:
| Item | Material cost (€) |
| 13 sheets of matte photo paper | 1.70 |
| 13 sheets of colored cardboard | 3.24 |
| 0.84 square meters of double-sided glue film (9 square feet) | 14.80 |
| 1.5 square meters of matte laminating film (16 square feet) | 11.94 |
| International shipping via regular mail in a flat cardboard envelope without extra box: | 7.80 |
| Total | 39.48 |
I will conservatively estimate the ink consumption and printer depreciation with an additional 0.50 € per set.
Sanity check: You may notice that these material costs roughly correspond to the total amount charged per set by an industrial manufacturer and equal the individual contribution to my crowdfunding campaign.
For tools, I use a photo printer, a hot laminator, a cutting mat, an utility knife, a bone folder and a corner rounder punch.
Labor
Printing the cards takes about 1 hour. Gluing, laminating and cutting the cards takes 3.5 hours of labor (approx. 15 minutes per sheet of six cards, times 13). Plus half an hour for packaging and shipping, so that’s 5 hours of labor. I am not even trying to factor in the effort to create the art, which took me about one year.
The First Set
Of course, I tested all these numbers and processes and created my very first handmade Tarot Deck this week. I hope it became apparent that this handmade Tarot Card Deck constitutes a unique collectible item and a truly intimate token of my artistic work. In light of recent events, I also want to point out that my handmade Tarot Deck retains it’s collectible value even in a post-apocalyptic world without the blockchain (or electricity, for that matter).
All things considered, I am willing to sell this first, fully handmade version of my erotic Tarot card deck for an even amount of 111 €, corresponding to an equally beautiful and mystical amount of $ 115.63.
Update
I guess the cards have a way of finding their owners! This deck will travel the seven seas… Congratulations and warm regards to the new owner!
If you are interested in acquiring a handmade Tarot set, reach out via E-Mail, Tobias.Kruppa@posteo.de or through the chat form on this page.