I made some trading cards for my friends in a Discord server we are all in together. Our server is called The Bullpen, so I named it the Bullpen Trading Card Game. Real original.
The Origin
It kind of all started when Carter posted an article about middle-aged man trading cards in Japan. Dave and I were chatting, and one of us said in passing that we should have Bullpen trading cards. This idea stuck in my head. One Google search later, I found makeplayingcards.com. It seemed affordable enough. So I decided to do it.
Designing
I am not a designer, so this was a challenge. But overall, I am very proud of what I came up with. I think it's clean and simple, but not plain.
I tried a couple of ideas for designs. I started with some futuristic-looking patterns with hexagons and stuff. Then I tried some more simple hand-drawn black-and-white stuff. I ultimately landed on the art deco-inspired gold metal look.
I use Affinity Designer these days for my design needs. I was able to find someone’s gold metal styles that worked perfectly. I used the Pirata One and Atkinson Hyperlegible Next fonts. Pirata is maybe not the most legible at small sizes, but I think it worked decently.
To showcase the art, I went with a more full-art look instead of a more traditional art-in-a-box design. The boxes float on top of the art with shadows.
All the art is based off of my friends' Discord profile pictures. I drew them all in Procreate on my iPad Mini. I'm not a very good artist, so it was nice having existing artwork to work with.
makeplayingcards.com has some good guidelines to work with. Pokémon cards (and most TCG cards) are 63 x 88mm. Add on some bleed and margin. At 300dpi, you end up with images that are 816 x 1110 pixels.
Packaging
I found a few videos on making your own booster packs. It's honestly pretty straightforward. Get a piece of paper the right size, put the cards in, glue it up, close it up, done.
My sheets are 12 x 16.5cm. This is roughly the same as Pokémon booster packs. I used the same design for the back of the cards for the front of the booster packs, but inverted. Maybe dumb, but I just printed these on a laser printer with white paper. It used up pretty much all my toner.
The last little detail is to crimp the ends of the pack. Most videos you find will use this quilling crimper. I bought it and tried it. If it's all you have access to, it's okay. But in my opinion, it makes the crimps too big. I wanted something more subtle and more similar to actual booster packs. So I made my own with Lego bricks and wood. Part 92947 is perfect. The holes on a Technic brick are too far apart, so I drilled a couple of holes in a piece of wood to get the spacing right.
Cost
I got 126 cards from makeplayingcards.com: 90 regular cards and 36 holographic cards. Though for 10 booster packs. With shipping, taxes, and tariffs, it came to $97.60, or about $0.77 per card. Honestly, not too bad for a small project like this. Obviously, the economics get better the more you produce. It took about a month to get to me from the time I ordered them.
Shipping to my friends was about $4.50 each. So in total, I spent about $12 per pack. It was worth every penny. This kind of felt like a once-in-a-lifetime surprise, and I would've spent more if I needed to.
I would do this all again.