Tarot Subscription Service

[Ms. Jocelyn]

Hi everyone,

I was looking for some art supplies and came across a monthly subscription service that contains art supplies.

Why is there not one for those of us who love Tarot?

It would not have to be every month, maybe every other?

What would it contain? What would you like to see in one?

I am just asking this as a hypothetical question, but wishing US Games or some Tarot dealer, or some savvy business person would create something for us.

Not really sure where to place this thread, but hopefully some of you have good ideas out there, and who knows, maybe someone will get the idea to offer one at a reasonable price.

 

[gregory]

Honestly I can't see it working. Tastes in decks vary so much; so often a new deck will come out and some will love it while some hate it - so how on earth a relatively small community could keep something like this going, I don't know. The same would apply to tarot books, and as for bags and spreadcloths.... some LOVE them; on the other hand I buy dollar store bags so I have more to spend on decks.

Art supplies and fiction books and so on have a much wider range. There aren't THAT many new decks out unless you include POD decks like thegamecrafter and so on, which I don't see working out - so there would inevitably be very limited choices - with a book club, there maybe 25 to choose from every month, and they all come from different publishers all over the world, and... For a single publisher - even Lo Scarabeo doesn't have enough new decks out each year to keep it up for long, and US Games even fewer.

 

[Zephyros]

I don't know if that would work, but maybe a rental service would? I would love to sample all kinds of decks without buying them, it would be wonderful if I could sign out a deck, library-style, for two weeks and then return it.

 

[Ms. Jocelyn]

I don't know if that would work, but maybe a rental service would? I would love to sample all kinds of decks without buying them, it would be wonderful if I could sign out a deck, library-style, for two weeks and then return it.

Wow! That is a good idea! I would be a part of that service. I too would like to try out some of the decks out there, but I don't want to put my cash down to buy them right away. That is something to think about.

 

[Ms. Jocelyn]

Honestly I can't see it working. Tastes in decks vary so much; so often a new deck will come out and some will love it while some hate it - so how on earth a relatively small community could keep something like this going, I don't know. The same would apply to tarot books, and as for bags and spreadcloths.... some LOVE them; on the other hand I buy dollar store bags so I have more to spend on decks.

Art supplies and fiction books and so on have a much wider range. There aren't THAT many new decks out unless you include POD decks like thegamecrafter and so on, which I don't see working out - so there would inevitably be very limited choices - with a book club, there maybe 25 to choose from every month, and they all come from different publishers all over the world, and... For a single publisher - even Lo Scarabeo doesn't have enough new decks out each year to keep it up for long, and US Games even fewer.

Hi Gregory,

Thanks for your thoughts. How would you feel about a rental service to rent a deck for a number of weeks. I think this would be a good idea.

 

[LeFou]

Maybe instead of centralizing the shipping, each subscriber or member could mail the deck to the next interested member, and so on.

Another possible idea is a so-called "group buy," where members pledge to buy something at a special one-time price (cooperatively pooling their purchasing power). There's a (non-Tarot) site called "Massdrop" which is having success with this model.

 

[gregory]

Hi Gregory,

Thanks for your thoughts. How would you feel about a rental service to rent a deck for a number of weeks. I think this would be a good idea.

Actually - I honestly don't know if I'd like it. I sound like a grouch - but.... There'd also be the postage all over the world thing. I don't know where you are - but even going physically from the UK to Canada as often as I do it can be a pain getting things lined up on time. We had big problems when we were circulating some travelling decks here a few years ago (there are threads !) - co-ordinating their movements to minimise postage and making sure whoever was next on the list wasn't about to go on vacation and so on...

Also - which doesn't affect me, but certainly would bother some people here - there would be worries about the "energy" building up in the cards which were being used by so many people, no ?

But I can see it would be a big draw for some people.

 

[danieljuk]

There is now monthly subscription for boxes for *everything* and I think ultimately this year we will see more and more stop or close down. It's good to get one box of craft or art supplies but then next month you get more of this and some things you don't like. If you can't select what comes, you will get more and more of things you don't like or repeating items. In the end it's a really expensive way of buying because you have loads of things you don't want and that is the problem with the ideal of it.

If you did it with tarot, you might get quite a lot of interest in the first month and then the next deck, people might already have and so do you provide alternatives and substitutes, which is a logistical nightmare? (especially if you are bulk buying for the boxes). It's very hard to make it keep going!

In the form of decks or boxes of tarot stuff I don't think it could work but I said before on AT, I think a subscription service which gives you access to many many decks digitally would work! Maybe a website or an app (or access to both) and you can use thousands of decks in your readings online. You pay a certain amount per month for access. You can do your readings and save them (like a picture of the spread). If you cancel or don't pay your subscription, you lose access to the decks! I think that way of doing it could work, especially if it gave you access to thousands of decks to play with and try

 

[delinfrey]

danieljuk, actually Fool's Dog provides a similar service, you can download a free app for sampling different decks. It works on iOS, I don't know about Android/WP.

I would actually be totally in for something like the 90s-binder subscriptions were (for home deco, cooking, natural encyclopaedia etc). So you would subscribe, get a beautiful binder, and then each month you would get a package - with pages for your binder, which eventually forms a book. There could also be a "deck of the month" included, and some general items (some ink for gilding, a little bag, a DIY box project...). I think it would be very much fun.

 

[gregory]

Um - see under the Mind, Body Spirit magazine. Ran for years, loads of people just gave up and there are a zillion incomplete sets of cards floating around... And storage is a huge issue with those things - we collected an encyclopaedia by magazine years ago and it takes about 10 times the space a normal bound copy would - and you had to buy the binders as an extra.