Hi everybody,
I came to this forum when I went through my web site statistics. I was completely intrigued by the shown backs of this thread.
For all of you who want to see their own design made on real good quality card stock there are some good news. Usually it is impossible to print directly onto Bicycle cards without removing the finish. So the removing and reapplying of the finish after the print is very time consuming (and expensive)
I found a solution how to print directly onto cards without removing the finish. But these cards are not Bicycles as they are printed here in Germany. I call them Haicicles (Hai means Shark in Germany), they have another finish (water based instead of nitro based finish compared to Bicycles due to environmental issues) and do not fan that great like Bikes, but they have the same paper material (3 layers, same thickness, flexibility, size, corner roundings, linen structure etc) so that they could even be added to a Bicycle deck without getting noticed by a layman.
The drawback of the finish is now a great advantage as I found out that the laser printing can be printed onto these cards without removing the finish. So now I could easily save a lot of time when producing the cards, and that would make the cards much cheaper compared to the price of custom printed Bikes from me. At the moment I am producing blank back decks at the manufactury to have enough decks for printing the backs, so that I only have to print the backs and not the faces. The faces are the same like Bikes, only the ace and the Jokers are different.
Great thread, I agree, do not let this one die.
Christian, the Card-Shark