I won the latest Kings Wild Project giveaway! They are running a pretty huge Kickstarter campaign right now, The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring, that was not only fully-funded on day #1 but is currently sitting just $1000-shy of $300k... the campaign's goal, for perspective, is $20k.
The deck is very artsy, which is true to KWP's style. Some of their decks it's a bit much, if we're being honest. In those times though, normally the tuck case knocks it out of the park and it's a "I need this deck" kind of situation. The Lord of the Rings playing cards though, wow!
I don't want to spend all your time summarizing the campaign, but I want to highlight the three different decks. They have the standard deck. The gilded deck. And the Legacy deck. Each of the three have the same design, front-and-back. Gilded is, well, gilded. But Legacy is where it gets fun.
The Legacy deck comes in an amazing looking black tuck. That black tuck comes in a wooden slip case with a silver coin mounted on it! Holy smokes, I want this thing a lot! Except... it's $200. I'm sorry LOTR and KWP, I can't swing that no matter how much I really love the look of it.
But wait! Let's circle back to the "I won the giveaway" note that I started with... what is actually being given away?
Yeah, you read that right! The winners of the giveaway (there were two) each get a Gandalf Tier from the Kickstarter campaign. That's a full brick of the standard decks. 2 gilded decks. And not one, but 2 of the Legacy ones!!! I'm still super excited about this, you have no idea.
The campaign itself still has 22 days left until it ends, so production likely won't start for a month or two (or longer) after that. I'll likely see the giveaway prize in the Fall, my guess is October or November. We'll see though.
Oh, and in the time it took me to write all of the above, the campaign is now just over $305k! Hot damn.
On another note, completely related to the above, I also won a giveaway in the beginning of March from Organic Playing Cards. That giveaway was for one of their new Exotic v2 decks!
Normally, to get one of their Exotic decks, you have to complete their "Passport" book. Each new deck release that they do, if you buy it directly from them, you'll receive a little holo sticker. That sticker goes into your little passport book and when you collect 6 unique stickers, you mail it to them and they send you an Exotic deck. Alternatively, there's always eBay.
But yeah, in March I was sitting on a passport with 5 stickers -- I was excited because their latest deck was arriving any day and I'd complete my passport and finally get an Exotic deck. And then I won the giveaway!!! This was awesome news because it meant I would be able to get both v1 and v2 decks!
The good news is, I did complete my passport and I mailed it in. The bad news is, I still haven't received my giveaway prize.
It's been a little over a month and a half and still nada. I reached out to them just in case they sent it and it was lost in the mail or something, but their response was that it'll come soon, they ship them all out at once a little later after the release. So, we'll see.
Honestly, it's a free deck that I won because I shared their post to my IG story. I'm not that worried about not getting it. Will I show them some extra love if I do get it? Of course! Will I call them out if they never send it to me? Probably not. They've been really good about giveaways in the past, so to me this would be a one-off thing.
Which brings me to a point. People get so worked up over giveaways and "not getting their free sh*t" and it just seems silly to me. You literally did nothing to earn or deserve "the thing" and you're flipping out because someone else isn't giving it to you. Chill out and shuffle some cards.
I started watching a Masterclass / Lecture with David Regal during my lunch breaks this week. I'm 3 hours in so far, which is I think halfway, and though he hasn't shown many tricks or routines, he has given a lot of great info.
Not sure why I started leading the conversation that way though, I actually wanted to talk about one of the tricks he showed. It's not a card trick, and in fact it's with a simple brown paper bag. Like one of those ones you'd carry lunch in, if you didn't have a lunch box and you're too proud to just reuse a plastic grocery bag.
He had one of those little wooden puzzle toys, all split into pieces on the table in front of him. He dropped them all into the paper bag and gave it a shake, then dumped out the contents and bam - the puzzle was completely put together!
Was the ending expected? Of course! I've seen enough magic to know that when you put pieces of something into a bag, they are all back together when they come out of the bag. That, or a Rubik's cube solves itself. However, did I know how it was possible for this to happen? Not at all!
You see, the convincer here was how the paper bag started. It was completely folded. It was flat. There was nothing in it.
He didn't start with a completely open bag and just showed the inside at an angle. No, the bag was flat, and he unfolded it in front of us. He dropped in the pieces and shake, shake, shake -- out comes a solid block. The hell?!
I immediately jumped to a routine I want to do with this concept. What I'm thinking is, I unfold the paper bag and drop in 52 loose playing cards. Then drop in an empty tuck case. Then the torn-up cellophane wrapper. Shake, shake, shake -- out comes a completely wrapped and sealed deck, in new-deck order! Or, better yet, in a perfect stack order so it appears shuffled already. Now I just need to go the store to get some bags. And rubber cement.