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Cbkimble wrote:Very much my forward to this deck. I hope it's waiting for me when I get home next week.

Shipping from Greece is fairly quick, but I am not thinking it is quite that quick. I expect packages to be able to make it to the US in around two weeks, making likely first site closer to the 27th or 1st of March, since there are only 28 days - for anything other than major cities like NYC, LA, etc. Hard to say exactly, but I would hope that we will be able to handle them by then. The decks are very good feeling in-hand, even the gilded ones.

We'll see!

Mike wrote ....

I hope to be able to follow up with another truly rare, beautiful deck from the 1880's. We'll see!

Please do this, Mike ....

Bruno wrote:Mike wrote ....

I hope to be able to follow up with another truly rare, beautiful deck from the 1880's. We'll see!

Please do this, Mike ....

I have not made a secret of wanting to do something like the OG Orient Express deck, but I have no concrete plans - yet.

I will say that I am already working on this particular deck, and reading between the lines, Grimaud printed them and owns the rights. I do recall sending out a message to a French sounding name recently.
Maybe not the best examples, but I grabbed these from WoPC.

Mike,

The OG Orient Express is composed of two decks? One with the faces of the upper picture and the other with the faces of the lower picture?
I like them both, but the lower ones really look amazing.

I would also like to see a Mémoires de Casanova reconstruction.
http://www.wopc.co.uk/france/philibert/casanova

I saw in other post, that a while back, a group of UC members bought some Vladislav Erko playing cards, can you tell me where they were bought?

Thanks

Smocito wrote:Mike,

The OG Orient Express is composed of two decks? One with the faces of the upper picture and the other with the faces of the lower picture?
I like them both, but the lower ones really look amazing.

I would also like to see a Mémoires de Casanova reconstruction.
http://www.wopc.co.uk/france/philibert/casanova

I saw in other post, that a while back, a group of UC members bought some Vladislav Erko playing cards, can you tell me where they were bought?

Thanks

There are several truly great candidates for restoration, but I got authorization to do the OG Orient Express overnight, so that looks like a "go".

The Vladislav Erko decks were me getting them from a source in Russia for the troops here. I remember that we ended up with sets of the three he had already made at that point and the cost was about $100 delivered for the group.

You might try looking for them at the 4 Kings site in Russia? Not sure if they are still fairly easily available, but I just had roughly 30 decks total shipped to me directly from Ukraine and then parcelled them out to the ten or so interested parties here at the time.

Actually the site (4kings.ru) no longer exists, so I don't have anything worth relating except for maybe look for a Russian or Ukrainian website that caters to playing cards.

Thank you.

One fellow member has already messaged me indicating an ebay vendor.
Congratulations on the restoration clearance. Those are great news to everybody who loves cards.

Mike Ratledge wrote: I got authorization to do the OG Orient Express overnight

Great News Mike.
i presume it`s the Cartes Iniennes deck you have the go ahead for
Will you be doing the original 1890`s pack with no numbers or the 1986 Venise-Simplon Orient Express deck with numbers
Either way i`ll be in..Looking forward to my Hindertjahrkarte pack
jase

Jock1971 wrote:

Mike Ratledge wrote: I got authorization to do the OG Orient Express overnight

Great News Mike.
i presume it`s the Cartes Iniennes deck you have the go ahead for
Will you be doing the original 1890`s pack with no numbers or the 1986 Venise-Simplon Orient Express deck with numbers
Either way i`ll be in..Looking forward to my Hindertjahrkarte pack
jase

I'd love to get the OG tucks done, but I don't know that I've ever seen one other than pictures. If you have a good source for the original tuck, I'd _LOVE_ to see it, since we depend on having the best graphics to work from.

The Hundertjahrekarte was done from scans of the OG / 1933 edition by a German collector that's a friend of Gerd Mathes of A.S.S. / now part of Cartamundi. We foundt he tucks and inserts and things by brute force, looking around the 'net everywhere we could until we were certain that we had seen everything. Actually we found one part that Gerd had never seen, and translated it from German to English (actually, I had him do it, since it was truly over-zealous "Third Reich" political stuff, and the direct translation didn't make a lot of sense).

A few things many might have never noticed: the tax stamp from 1933 says "2d Reich" because they hadn't had time to update them yet in early 1933. The models for the Boers / Bauers ("Jacks" in English, 'farmer' in German - curiously, that's actually Zud-Afrik or Dutch based, not truly German - some say it should be "Bube" = 'boy') are all the same person, but unless you really look at the finished artwork Lotrek did, you likely would not notice. Same for the "D" indices. All twelve "face" / court cards have two extra people, one side is a 'worker', other side is a mercant or soldier, except for the Boer of Kreuz.

Anyway, details, details: I would like to be certain that we don't miss any (details)! Anything that you might be able to show or direct us to would be great!

Mike if you do restore the OG Orient Express Deck, I will literally piss honey.

One of the most beautiful decks ever designed.

Thanks, guys! I tried to listen to the people that are collecting this time, even though I truly think that the Hundertjahrkarte was the right pick for the first time, some people just don't particularly care about or for it.

The most popular deck - by far - people mentioned when I asked about what we might do next was the OG Orient Express decks. I agree with everyone that it is a gorgeous deck, again way outside the ability and cost range for 99.9% of collectors. The Dondorf Centennial Jubilee deck set is unobtainable for all practical purposes, but Orient Express is equally "unobtainium" at this point.

Mike Ratledge wrote: again way outside the ability and cost range for 99.9% of collectors

Mike Ratledge wrote: but Orient Express is equally "unobtainium" at this point.

Well i gotta disagree with you there.. i got four V.S.O.E. sets altogether, both grimaud sets and two waddingtons sets (with different backs) and i never paid over £40 a set and i got all sets within the last two years, so they are out there and at resonable prices.

Jock1971 wrote:

Mike Ratledge wrote: again way outside the ability and cost range for 99.9% of collectors

Mike Ratledge wrote: but Orient Express is equally "unobtainium" at this point.

Well i gotta disagree with you there.. i got four V.S.O.E. sets altogether, both grimaud sets and two waddingtons sets (with different backs) and i never paid over £40 a set and i got all sets within the last two years, so they are out there and at resonable prices.

But not the 1870'ish version, right? I have not been looking lately, but it was usually hard to find.

Just keeping everyone up-to-date as much as possible: Lotrek found a good deal of the boxes that were produced for him had terribly offset dividers between the two decks, so it slowed down the shipping / fulfillment of these restoration sets a couple of days until he could go through them and weed out the ones that had the divider between the two decks set off to one side. I didn't ask for a ratio, but I get the feeling that it was something more than 10% if not a great deal more, but as I understand it most of them have been shipped today or will be heading to the backers (first) on Monday.

Sorry, we just decided that at this point everyone had been waiting plenty and we weren't going to let a partially substandard piece of cardboard go out to everyone who has backed this project. We wanted the quality to be as good as possible, so we erred on the side of being another couple days or a week rather than sending them out in an unknown condition. The end result for these is truly nice! Cartamundi - in the end - provided a really nice set of decks including the hand gilding of the fully restored decks which were done by their division in France (formerly the "Grimaud" company, now owned by Cartamundi, which is producing a revival of sorts of the old Grimaud decks this year).

Mike Ratledge wrote:

Off topic but who has got the rights for this deck?

guru wrote:

Mike Ratledge wrote: ... (graphic removed)

Off topic but who has got the rights for this deck?

I got the rights from Cartamundi. They own B P Grimaud of France, or what used to be known as Grimaud. They made a lot of classic / fancy decks including many of the early Hermes decks from the early 1950's.

Any news on these, have they shipped yet

i ordered from UC so i don`t get kickstarter notices

Jock1971 wrote:Any news on these, have they shipped yet

i ordered from UC so i don`t get kickstarter notices

Jace, as far as I know all packages have been shipped, although Lotrek has not sent out all of the tracking information yet.

I have already heard of a few deliveries in Europe, and I expect my own ahortly.

Lotrek should be able to provide fulfillment information including tracking number. Kickstarter package shipping was fiest, and we tried to match them to UCdecksales.com orders.

Thanks mike.
will wait until the weekend and if i still hear nothing will give Lotrek a PM.

Hi, guys,

Now that it seems that all pledges have been sent to backers, does anyone know when the uncuts bought here in UC after the campaign are going to be sent?

Gonzalo wrote:Hi, guys,

Now that it seems that all pledges have been sent to backers, does anyone know when the uncuts bought here in UC after the campaign are going to be sent?

KS backers had first priority for fulfillment, but I believe they have all been mailed at this point. Lotrek should be able to provide shipping info / tracking #, I think.

I have heard of them all over Europe, Canada and see mine inbound waiting for customs, and my single gilded decks are already here (Wednesday), but they were mailed separately.

As far as uncuts and UCdecksales orders, they should be immediately behind the KS packages. I should have done a better job trying to match those to the KS backers, but I must have messed that up. Of course, it could easily be because I don't recognize a username(s) on KS, also. I should have used addresses for matching the two pieces, but I didn't.

The majority of decks has been sent but there are about 20 that I'll hopefully send tomorrow (or Tuesday).

Still waiting on the UC ordered set and an uncut sheet!! Hopefully I’ll be getting them soon!!

niceguy0750 wrote:Still waiting on the UC ordered set

You are not the only one..
Have Faith.

Hey Mike - Does the gilded deck from UC Deck Sales come wrapped in cellophane?

Also, how many sets are left for purchase?

Jock1971 wrote:

niceguy0750 wrote:Still waiting on the UC ordered set

You are not the only one..
Have Faith.

Yep, Still waiting on mine in the UK too

misterharmanko wrote:

Jock1971 wrote:

niceguy0750 wrote:Still waiting on the UC ordered set

You are not the only one..
Have Faith.

Yep, Still waiting on mine in the UK too

Waiting in US too.

Lotrek gave me a tracking number and mine arrived in NY on Monday with no movement information since. Customs? A little troubling.

I've received my decks, in Portugal, yesterday. (I ordered in Kickstarter)

The cards are awesome.
I found the small detail, of the cards order in the deck, very classy.

I'm now waiting for the uncut sheet.

Bruno happilly collected his Hellenic stamps yesterday.
Beautiful Artifacts Re-Assessed Wonderously !
Thank you Mike, Lortek ....
Deeply Grateful .... and .... arouses the desire .... for more ....

I got mine yesterday! I love them and truly appreciate the work.