Hello fellow lemmings! I’m designing a customized deck of cards as a present for a friend of mine. When finished, I’d like to print it by myself, because online print services would cost way too much for a single deck of cards. I’d like the cards to be robust and durable, and to be easy to shuffle. Is there a particular type of paper that you recommend? Or something to apply afterward? I’m thinking of plasticizing the cards after the print process, but I don’t know how well it would come out. Any idea is welcome!
Professional printers can do it cheaper than you can, even for a one off. No personal experience with a job like this, but you can buy quite small batches of printed envelopes a lot cheaper than plain envelopes because they get such massive discounts on their bulk orders. It’s not going to be cost-effective for you to do a good job of it.
This, call up a local print shop or email them. They’ll do it, and since a deck of cards isn’t like one or two pieces of paper it’ll be cheaper for them to do.
They’ll also make sure you designed the cards correctly to include proper bleed and margins and colours. And they’ll help make sure you get decent stock paper so they don’t peel or get damaged too easily.