This article is going to tell the story of how Chancers playing cards was conceptualised followed by a bunch of fun facts and statistics about the project.
Chancers playing cards was the first ever deck produced by Good Pals! We began the design process in early 2022, taking inspiration from the "cards you're dealt" graphic which initially was a t-shirt / sticker graphic.
I liked this graphic so much and I believed we could create a deck and story inspired from this. The image, along with the quote, has themes of defying the odds and reigning victorious. I have always liked an underdog story and the idea of risk vs reward.
Therefore, the name Chancers seemed suited, as based on a google search the Chancer was described as someone who is willing to takes risks to gain something in return. The deck then began to incorporate various elements from casinos to compound this theme.
This was mine and 47kills' first experience creating a deck of cards, so naturally there were challenges. In particular, the back design required several iterations however elements such as the court cards were approved right away.
One of the key reasons I chose 47kills was because I thought his art style was so cool and that it could definitely work well with a deck of cards. The project successfully funded on Kickstarter between September and October 2022 raising just over £9300 in funding.
The Chancers series would conclude in mid 2024, with the following versions:
- Chancers V1 Black + V2 Burgundy (2022)
- Chancers V3 Green (Marked) - 2024
- Chancers V4 Magenta, V5 Pink & V6 Gold (2024)
- Each deck has 1 x gilded variant, except for V3 green which had 2 gilded variants
To be truthful, in some ways I regret how many versions we produced. Mostly in the sense that the time could have been spent focusing on new artistic projects for decks, but in some ways producing multiple colourways is necessary to succeed financially with such projects.
If the decks don't succeed from a financial standpoint it's very tricky to generate funds to design and produce future releases.
The Chancers series will almost certainly be the biggest print runs for any series we have done (5158 decks produced). It seems crazy to think now, but in 2022 we did a print run of over 2000 decks combined for Chancers V1 & V2, however with USPCC the minimim run was 1000 per deck.
This was naivety on my part, not knowing just how many decks that really is. But that's the thing, when you don't have experience producing cards you aren't able to forecast such issues. You don't quite know how many decks is too many.
We didn't learn from this either in 2024, as we printed 1000 Chancers V3 marked edition, and even accepted a further 300ish from USPCC at a discounted price (due to overruns). However, when you already have hundreds of unsold decks, it's probably not wise to pay for more, even if they are cheap!
We did attempt to learn our lesson for Chancers V4-V6, making this a 'limited edition series' where we printed 350-500 of each deck variant, alongside gilded decks. We thought this would be the most popular series, with 3 colourways, including a gold deck, and the fact they were much lower print runs compared to with USPCC.
Ironically, it was actually the least successful financially, only by a little bit, but we definitely thought these would perform better. It makes sense though, there are already enough Chancers variants, it makes sense there would not be as much excitement for more colours in hindsight.
To this day (June 3rd, 2025), we have just 12% remaining of our entire Chancers print run. That's still a few hundred decks considering we printed 5158 Chancers decks in total, but we're on the cusp of selling out of Chancers V1, whereas our V5 Pink and V6 Gold decks have approximetely 50 copies left of each.
If I was to do this entire project again, there's a few things I would change:
- Chancers V1 Black would not exist - just not a fan of black and white decks usually
- Chancers V6 Gold would feature gold foil on the backs, not just the card fronts
- Would also have produced less gilded variants
That being said, doing is a great thing. You learn a lot and I have taken on board feedback as well as my own thoughts on how future projects could be run differently.
For the most part, when releasing new variants in one series - e.g Chancers, Halloween Tales, we want to add something new to each variant as much as can, something truly different. For instance, with our upcoming Christmas playing cards (late 2025 release) we have made 3 versions that feature the same face cards.
However, each deck has a unique tuck box AND back design. Not only that, one of them is a limited edition and will feature foil on the face cards. However, personally in my own deck collections I very much enjoy having my favourite decks in different colourways.
So that is the story behind Chancers playing cards. If you would like to purchase any decks from this series, click the link here.
For a full list of facts about print runs, you can visit our production history here.
