Aging cards

has anyone ever artificially aged a deck? I know certain folks trim their borders for aesthetic reasons...was wondering if aging was ever considered.

I know a process that can make a deck look and feel over a hundred years old. I might try it on the Touchstone deck.

Hmm.. I know about the tea method and some others- will you let us participate in your knowledge? Sounds interesting and artificial ageing might become the touchstone well

there are a slug of threads on this, please share your own method with us?

Nothing really new. Submerging the card in cold black coffee then pressing between books. Sometimes I rub extra light sandpaper around the edges of the card to make them a bit uneven. And I'll run the sandpaper lightly over the face or back of card to give more grit and texture. I do the the sandpapering before the coffee so the coffee stains deep into the sandpaper lines.

The key is patience. You wanna keep those cards pressed between books a good ten hours...this way they are nice and flat but well aged.

That's about it.

OMG, yes, if you do a search, you'll find tons of threads about it. I accidentally aged my Gilded trying to take my pic with cards floating in the air around my head. Trouble is, they landed on the cement drive, about 97 times. Finally, Ciro very kindly offered to PhotoShop it for me & it came out stunning! (That's the teensy avatar here.) However, my Gilded is very worn but luckily I have a spare.

Oh to be a fly on the wall of a neighbor while you were doing this accidental aging technique..

falls down lol

You'll find in general parlance around here, people will talk of "Umbrae-ing" a deck. This term was coined after Umbrae described a method of softening stiffening cards - but it will contribute to the look of them as well. Then there's ultra-fine sandpaper to rough-up the laminate, followed by swabbing with black tea, which I'm sure we all know.

Also, *use* will do it, better and more authentically, because all the cards will be different.

You'll also find around the boards, a great deal of discussion of people who have noticed a flaw, a tiny stain or scratch or bend, on their deck, whbich they think makes the deck unuseable for them! <laughter> I see more discussions based on preserving decks or replacing individual cards that might be starting to show signs of aging, than I do on deliberately aging cards ahead of time.

Bear in mind, that most if not all methods of aging them, will also con tribute to them wearing out sooner than usual. If you particularly love a deck, and it goes out of print (which they do, regularly!), and you have artificially aged it, and then with wear over teh decades it becomes unusable, you might live to rue it bitterly.

I did it to a "printed in Italy" Hanson-Roberts. I ran each card - viciously - over the edge of a table, on both sides and in all four directions to soften the stock.

Twice.

It was still stiff and sticky and horrid. So I took a fine emery paper to the surface of each card, both sides. Then dunked it in warm, strong tea.

Twice.

Dried it between books and newspaper. But it took weeks, not hours, for it to dry, and it still curled when I took it out. But it turned out great after all that, and it's now roaming the world out there somewhere as the Trade Train mascot deck.

\m/ Kat

thorhammer said:

I did it to a "printed in Italy" Hanson-Roberts. I ran each card - viciously - over the edge of a table, on both sides and in all four directions to soften the stock.

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I did all of this to my mini Hanson-Roberts deck, except the tea part, and the cards are still thick and stiff and tacky, which is a shame because I like the deck and I have tiny hands.

ncefafn said:

I did all of this to my mini Hanson-Roberts deck, except the tea part, and the cards are still thick and stiff and tacky, which is a shame because I like the deck and I have tiny hands.

Click to expand...

Keep an eye on eBay for an early, "window" box printing. It's got divine production, I wouldn't let mine out of my collection! It's an orange box, not blue, but make sure the seller will vouch for it being the original printing

\m/ Kat