“Decks on the back of shelves”, good and bad news!
Are you looking for some of our out-of-print decks? Here’s the good and bad news about the situation in the studio.
We receive regular emails asking about the availability of our decks that are currently out of print, and people enquire about “decks on the back of shelves.” To clarify, yes, we often have some OOP decks stashed away, but typically, we don’t sell them individually.
Our commitment to transparency means that we want to tell you clearly that we usually set aside a portion of standard and limited edition decks from each print run, typically between 20-30 decks. For example, if we have a limited edition run of 500, only 475 copies are made available. We make every effort to convey this on our product listings.
In the past, we neglected to reserve any decks for ourselves, resulting in times when our own copies were virtually non-existent – once we ended up with a grand total of TWO of our companion books.
This was quite sad and it was also sometimes frustrating, especially when resellers profited from selling on our decks and books, and we ourselves could have used the income – particularly so given our lengthy design process and the need to sustain our studio while working on new projects. Consequently, our policy changed several years ago, and we decided to always to keep a few decks for our own use. Some of these are shared with friends, leading to a gradual reduction in our stash (when we were in Prague and lots of people called in, the stash reduced alarmingly fast!).
As the studio shifts its focus away from tarot, we think the remaining decks will be best sold together in a collective release. This is the fairest way to give everyone to get one of them when the time comes.
What about "seconds" or extra cards with no packaging?
Each print run usually yields some “seconds” and extra “over-run” cards. Since we print in Europe, printers send these to us, which we appreciate. The nature of cold-stamping and complex printing methods can result in minor imperfections, often at the beginning of a run, so we set these decks aside during the quality control process (all of us looking carefully and giving an opinion!) and place them in storage.
Our studio has limited storage space, and items are securely boxed, sealed, and placed on high shelves. Regrettably, we are unable to sell any of these in response to the numerous weekly emails asking us to check “the back shelves” for available decks. Doing so would negate the purpose of preserving these decks and would be unfair to people who want the decks but don’t email us. Moreover, this process would be impractical due to the time and pricing complexities involved – the value of our decks seems to change over time and so we would have a permanent headache over how to price them.
With appreciation for your understanding, we therefore plan to conduct a rolling inventory of our tucked-away decks. Periodically, we will offer what we have for sale, as we are concluding our time in tarot design after completing The Bohemian Cats’ Theatre Tarot. Please note that quantities will be limited, and we will strive to ensure fairness in making them available when the time comes. Any faults, lack of packaging etc will be clearly stated of course, so you will know exactly what you are ordering.