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Playing Cards Coatings and Board

Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 11:42 am
by dragsamou
Hi Members

Interesting info to read:

Part 1: Playing Cards Coatings
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2018-04-26

Part 2: Playing Card Board
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2018-05-17

Part 3: Building A Card
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2018-06-29

Re: Playing Cards Coatings

Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 6:07 pm
by Alifromcairo
Interesting, despite I still not have put my hands on Dominaria cards. I'm curious if it will have a different feeling and if it will help to spot counterfeits more easily in the future as Tom says "developing these coatings can be challenging" ?

Re: Playing Cards Coatings

Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 2:36 am
by BillBo
Alifromcairo wrote:
Thu May 03, 2018 6:07 pm
I'm curious if it will have a different feeling
I didn't know about this when I cracked packs but noticed that all cards felt rough, not sleek at all. But who knows whether this was due to the new coating or just a random anomaly still within production specs … We'll find out I guess.

Re: Playing Cards Coatings

Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 6:18 am
by GlobalBoosterHunter
One of the YouTubers said the Standard Showdown packs for Dominaria were nice and smooth, unlike the booster cards.

I have only opened one booster but it felt wrong so I stopped.

Re: Playing Cards Coatings

Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 11:03 am
by cataclysm80
The Dominaria cards I've seen locally are more smooth than previous cards.
This new coating that they've just started using in the Dallas Texas print facility has been used at the Japan facility for a while.
If you have Dominaria cards made at a different print facility, they probably won't have this coating, but expect the other print facilities to switch over in the future.
The change in coatings very likely happened for economical and/or environmental reasons.
The reason the change was announced publicly is because WotC needed to respond to growing player concerns about poor quality control. That's also why Tom is writing these articles for the public.
This change in coating was a good opportunity to look like they were trying to do something about the problem.
Also, the vice president of production was fired, but that wasn't announced publicly.


Regarding how the new coating will affect counterfeiting...
This new coating is more like the coating currently used on the mass produced counterfeit cards.
This means that from here forward the real cards will be more like the fake cards.

Re: Playing Cards Coatings

Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 7:28 pm
by dragsamou
cataclysm80 wrote:
Fri May 04, 2018 11:03 am
Regarding how the new coating will affect counterfeiting...
This new coating is more like the coating currently used on the mass produced counterfeit cards.
This means that from here forward the real cards will be more like the fake cards.
Couldn't they used a coating to prevent that...Sigh.

Re: Playing Cards Coatings

Posted: Sat May 05, 2018 3:24 pm
by cataclysm80
Yes, they probably could have changed the coating to be less like the counterfeits, but they're more concerned with all of the other things that the coating has to do, which are the things Tom talked about, while also making sure that the change isn't so drastic that the new cards would all be considered marked cards when used in a deck.

If they wanted to, it wouldn't be difficult to add something to the coating which made it look different under special light, but this feature would just be copied by the counterfeiters.

WotC is more concerned with making a good product than running from counterfeiters.
The counterfeiters will follow anything WotC does, and constantly changing things doesn't help much because it leaves players confused and trying to keep up with the changes. That creates a lot of false claims about whether real cards are fake, which is a nightmare for vendors.

There isn't much WotC can do about the current counterfeits. Their main concern is that players aren't worried about it enough to cause a drop in consumer confidence, because that affects sales volume.
Counterfeit Magic cards have been around since January 1994, and they will always be around. They are being made in higher quantities than ever before, but it's still a very small amount compared to the massive size of a real WotC print run. Public concern about counterfeits can be a bigger problem than the counterfeits themselves, so it's better for WotC if people just don't talk about the counterfeits.

Re: Playing Cards Coatings and Board

Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 5:10 am
by dragsamou
Hi Members

Just added the link of Part 2 in the first post: Playing Card Board

Re: Playing Cards Coatings and Board

Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 6:50 am
by dragsamou
Hi Members

Just added the link of Part 3 in the first post: Building A Card

Re: Playing Cards Coatings and Board

Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2018 12:19 am
by BillBo
dragsamou wrote:
Sun Jul 01, 2018 6:50 am
Just added the link of Part 3
Interesting reads, keep us posted!

Re: Playing Cards Coatings and Board

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 6:03 pm
by dragsamou

Re: Playing Cards Coatings and Board

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 9:15 pm
by Neuron
dragsamou wrote:
Wed Jun 05, 2019 6:03 pm
New Card Stock:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2019-06-05
According to the article, War of the Spark has been printed with both the old and the new card stock, so we have card stock variants.
I'm curious if the Japanese factory will adopt the new paper as well.

Re: Playing Cards Coatings and Board

Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2019 3:03 am
by dragsamou
Another info:

Cartamundi Acquires The United States Playing Card Company

https://www.collectorplayingcards.com/b ... 8zhxfrW2i4

https://usplayingcard.com/

As a reminder, United States Playing Card Company is the company that printed Alternate Fourth Edition cards:
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/720-rar ... index.html

Re: Playing Cards Coatings and Board

Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 12:24 am
by cataclysm80
Thanks for posting this info here Alexis.

It may also be worth mentioning that some of the Masterpiece cards might have been printed with a stochastic method similar to Alt 4th.

Re: Playing Cards Coatings and Board

Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 3:34 pm
by BillBo
cataclysm80 wrote:
Wed Jun 12, 2019 12:24 am
printed with a stochastic method similar to Alt 4th.
This is what you're referring to?
http://printwiki.org/Stochastic_Screening
Enlighten us noobs.