If you want a card size or shape that isn’t offered in the selection on the form, you can create one for a one-time service fee of $650. This is because we will have to create a new die – a set of steel blades that cuts your card. However, once the die is made, we won’t have to make it again – meaning any re-orders on your project won’t include the $650 die-making charge.* Contact the Alpha Publishing Team at team@alphapublisher.com for more information on custom sizing. 

Paper card stock is categorized by its core: blue, black, or coreless. You can tell what core cards use by ripping them in half, as seen in the photo to the right. This shows blue core on top and black core on the bottom. The core prevents the card from being transparent when held up to bright light.

Varnish and lamination are two ways that you can finish your cards to protect the ink and prevent scratches.

Varnish is the most common finish type used for playing cards. This liquid gloss finish is applied by the offset printing press to seal in and protect the ink.

Lamination is the most protective card finish. Lamination is a thin polypropylene film that is applied after the printing process is complete. As seen in the video below, a lamination machine glues a roll of film onto the printed parent sheet to produce the desired effect.

Spot Color for Card Games

The best way to maintain color in offset printing is to use spot color. This is a great option for maintaining brand integrity in a logo, or to guarantee specific colors across different production runs.

First, the ink color is mixed to your exact specification. Then, the offset press applies the color to the finished document using a separate printing plate. The easiest way to specify a spot color is by using the Pantone Matching System, which identifies colors through a number.

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Linen Textured Cards

You’re probably familiar with linen texture if you’ve played with Bicycle cards or any other high-end playing cards. A linen texture can be applied to most of our available card stocks, as well as our two-piece boxes. Besides the obvious tactile addition, the texture adds ridges that reduce surface contact between cards, making them easier to shuffle, deal and handle.

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Metallic Inc vs Basic Foil Stamping

If you intend to incorporate other specialty printing options like embossing or debossing into your project, foil stamping works best. Because metallic ink encompasses real bits of metal, embossing or debossing could cause the ink to crack.

Foil stamping tends to outperform metallic ink in terms of longevity. The ink’s metal flecks may cause cracking as the product ages.

Metallic ink is typically the more economical option when compared to foil stamping.

Shrink Wrapping

Opting for shrink wrapping your deck without any other packaging is an economical choice, since shrink wrap is complimentary with an order of a deck of cards. Additionally, you can choose to shrink wrap multiple functioning decks of cards within your game, adding a professional touch to your card game.

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Pull Tab

For easy opening, you can add a pull tab to your shrink wrapped card deck. This option is only available for poker sized decks with blue core standard cardstock between 52 – 60 cards. Because of these limitations, please reach out to your Author Representative or the Alpha Publishing Team at team@alphapublisher.com for a recommendation if a pull tab is the right option for your order.

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Tuck-Box Packaging

A tuck box is a simple and compact way to package your card game. Frequently used for storing standard 52-card decks, tuck boxes are made by folding thick paper stock into a box with a flap top. Our boxes can hold up to 110 cards in a single deck or 220 cards in two decks side by side, and can be fitted with an instruction booklet or sheet. If your game requires more cards, we suggest using a two-piece box.

Our tuck boxes consist of 16pt card stock. For orders over 5,000 units, we also offer a plastic tuck box. This option looks sleek and is more durable than a paper tuck box.

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Two-Piece Box light vs. Heavyweight

We offer two material options: lightweight and heavyweight. Our lightweight box is made from 1.5mm high density paperboard – the industry standard material. For boxes bigger than 8.5 x 8.5 inches, we recommend our heavyweight box material, which uses 2mm high-density paperboard. This thickness will give support and prevent buckling on larger games.

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"Not-Random" Bookster Packs

A “not-random” booster pack is the easier of the two to make. Think of this as a functionality extension for a card-based role-playing game. Say you’re designing a game about teenage zombies — an example of this booster pack might be “Prom-bies,” a pack filled with 10 zombie characters with special dancing abilities. If you make 1,000 “Prom-bies,” they’ll all be the same. Customers that want to add a specific functionality to their game simply buy the booster pack for the functionality that they want.

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“Random” Booster Packs

If you want “random” custom booster packs, you’re moving into the realm of trading card games. These booster packs include a random assortment from hundreds of cards that you have designed and printed. Customers buy multiple booster packs hoping to get an especially powerful card. This revenue model is attractive to card game producers, retailers, and customers! However, it’s a revenue model that is not easily accessible to small creators.

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The main producers of booster packs – games like Pokémon, Magic the Gathering, or Yu-Gi-Oh! – are toy companies that have millions of dollars to produce their products, which gives them the financial ability to produce something like booster packs. The amount of units required to create any significant randomization is around 20,000. As a result, a creator who wants to create random custom booster packs needs to be prepared to spend somewhere in the $100,000 range.

Additionally, printing on foil packaging requires very high order minimums due to setup costs, so for most orders we are unable to print directly on booster packs. With that said, labels and stickers are cost-effective alternatives many game designers use to decorate their booster pack contents.

If you’re prepared to invest in creating custom booster packs, we can simplify the production process. Please note that in order to quote your randomized booster pack, we will require artwork as well as a mathematical breakdown of how many cards of each you will need. Again, the MOQ for randomization is 20,000 units.

A folded sheet is our simplest option for any original card game. It does the job–communicating what players need to know, without any frills. If you’re designing a standard poker deck, however, your custom card decks may not need any instructions at all.

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Instruction style cost

While instructions are a crucial part of your game, they can also drive up cost quite a bit. Try printing your card game instructions on the box or simply in black and white on a sheet of paper. Or, if you want to create a full color, glamorous instruction booklet, find out about other substitutions you can make throughout the card game manufacturing process to help you save money.