Plaid No. 162 Classic Playing Cards - Limited, Signed & Numbered - Artisan Letterpress Edition

One of the most considered and carefully crafted decks of playing cards we have ever produced - a genuinely limited, entirely British-made artisan collector's edition, hand-finished by us here in Manchester and produced in a small batch print run of 100x decks only – no reprints.

This is not a standard deck of playing cards. It is a small piece of British craft, made the old-fashioned way, in a bold nod to the great trailblazers of the past - the golden era of playing card design & production.

For some time, we have wanted to create a deck of playing cards made entirely here in the UK - from the cards themselves to the tuckbox, from the printing to the finishing. In a market dominated by large overseas print facilities, this presents a genuine challenge, and incurs additional costs, time and work.

Plaid No. 162 features a classic vintage plaid back design in off-white and navy blue; the faces are antique British, with a brand-new Ace of Spades inspired by historical references and finished in the A. Haines style.

The cards are printed by Ivory Graphics – the premier printer of playing cards in the UK, chosen by us after extensive testing of UK printers.

The tuckbox - printed for us by the prestigious Barnard & Westwood of London - a luxury print-house holding contracts with the Royal household - is printed on luxury grained white card stock with navy blue and gold foil, using a prodigious combination of cutting-edge litho-printing techniques and traditional letterpress printing. Letterpress printing produces a depth, texture and tactile quality that conventional printing simply cannot replicate - you feel the impression of the ink in the card when you run your finger across it. Hot gold foil stamping adds a further layer of luxury finish that catches the light beautifully. 

Each tuckbox is hand-assembled by us personally here in Manchester and individually hand-finished with care and attention to detail:

• Signed by hand
• Individually numbered out of 100
• Hot wax seal stamped

Initially created for our Patreon members, who have claimed a majority, the remaining decks are now being made available to all. 

At a glance:

• 100% designed, manufactured, assembled in & distributed from the UK
• Limited edition run of 100 individually signed & numbered copies - no re-prints
• Classic vintage plaid back design
• Antique-inspired face cards with new hand-drawn Ace of Spades
• Cards printed by Ivory Graphics, England
• Luxury letterpress tuckbox made by Barnard & Westwood of London
• Hot gold foil stamping on tuckbox
• Hand-assembled tuckbox - finished by us in Manchester
• Real wax seal on every copy
• 55 poker size playing cards - 2x Jokers + 1x extra card
• Intended primarily as a collector's piece 
  

*A note on handling: these cards are produced to a high standard of print and paper quality. They will handle beautifully and are entirely usable as a playing deck. However, in the interest of complete honesty - they will not handle with quite the same buttery smoothness or longevity as decks produced by specialist overseas facilities such as WJPC or Legends, whose spray and varnish treatments have been refined over hundreds of thousands of decks of high-volume production. Plaid No. 162 is intended primarily as a collector's piece of entirely British heritage, making it a unique phenomenon in the modern world of premium and luxury playing cards. If you plan to use it for serious cardistry or performance magic, we would gently suggest one of our other decks for that purpose. If you plan to treasure it, display it, and occasionally deal a game of cards with something special - you've come to the right place!