Decks You Wish You Hadn't Bought?

autumn star

I kind of wish that I never brought the Fenestra Tarot, it looked so attractive in the pictures but it's a bit boring in real life :)
 

Miss Divine

autumn star said:
I kind of wish that I never brought the Fenestra Tarot, it looked so attractive in the pictures but it's a bit boring in real life :)

Yep! When I first bought it, I liked it. Then I worked with it, and it got boring very very quickly.
The backs are better than the fronts!
 

Parzival

Decks You Wished You Hadn't Bought

aurarcana said:
....

- DruidCraft: I felt like some of the proportions were off. And that Hanged Man...


I recently re-visited the Druidcraft and appreciated some beautiful cards but noticed those awkward proportions here and there. It's interesting that many of the more cartoonish decks manage human proportions better. It must be damn difficult to paint 78 portraits or groups of humans.
 

Tibor

Miss Divine said:
I trimmed the Universal Waite first, and it was so much easier than I thought.
i trimmed the Radiant Rider Waite and it's perfect for trimming cos of the minors.the Universal Waite minors are difficult to trim in my opinion.Anyway,after trimming the Radiant Waite i no longer like the Universal Waite cos the borders distract me.So i regret buying the Universal Waite.
 

Altena

Sometimes you find yourself buying a deck that leaves you dead and cold. It might not speak to you at all. Perhaps it just isn't your kind of deck. Maybe it's too fluffy/too angsty/too dry/too muddled etc. You hate it and would happily see someone take it off your hands. In fact you'd even give it away for free AND pay for shipping yourself just to get rid of it.

So you start putting up a "Spring Sale" topic. You grab that terrible thing to make sure it's in a proper state and just when you hold it in your hands something changes. It peers up at you with those heartbreaking puppy-eyes, like it's begging you for a second chance. You look through the cards and come to realize that they're actually quite enchanting and beautiful in their own ways and it feels like you're involuntarily bonding with it. How could you ever consider selling such a thing? Back up on the shelf it goes.

Weeks later you still haven't forgotten how you decided to hold on to it. You haven't used or even touched it since. In fact you can't stand to look at it because that act alone would bring such an immense aggression to the surface. You hate it for merely existing, for coming into your life and for making it impossible for you to sell it. And it makes you feel like such a weak, weak person.

Those decks are highly dangerous and the kind I regret buying the most. The Vampire Tarot of the Eternal Night, Fenestra, Dark Angels and the LS Shaman Tarot are the obvious choices here.

I also regret buying decks that are completely and utterly unsellable, such as the Tarot of Dreams, the Ancestral Path and the Universal Dali.
 

Glass Owl

Altena said:
Those decks are highly dangerous and the kind I regret buying the most. The Vampire Tarot of the Eternal Night, Fenestra, Dark Angels and the LS Shaman Tarot are the obvious choices here
I received the Fenestra as a gift and I didn't really want to use it. I thought that the images were too drab but as soon as I started shuffling it, that changed. It turned out to be a deck that speaks to me in a soft way.

Lots of people here seem to really dislike the Vampire Tarot of the Eternal Night but I love mine. I really regret just buying the deck though -- if I had bought the kit I would have gotten the book (which I really want for the spreads in it.)

For some reason I like that type of art which is why I suppose I also love my Tarot of the Elves too. (That one jumped right off of the shelf and landed on my feet.)

I still wish I hadn't bought the Prediction and the Londa. Both of them I bought on a whim and paid more for them because they are OOP.

I also bought two copies of the Inspiration Tarot and while I have been meaning to use them to make my own decks I haven't done so. (I even spent a lot of money on the workbook.) I'm wishing now that I had just used that money on other decks that were already created.
 

HighPriestess

Wow, I can't believe how many people regret buying the Fenestra. It looks great to me! (She says having never seen it in person...)

I forgot to mention my Good Witch, Bad Witch cards. I know they have a few fans on AT and elsewhere, but I just find them too "cute" to take seriously, and I find the cards to be a little small, and I have small hands and even standard sized cards make for awkward shuffling!

I can't believe I just complained about small cards, lol....

Krystal
 

Glass Owl

HighPriestess said:
Wow, I can't believe how many people regret buying the Fenestra. It looks great to me! (She says having never seen it in person...)

I forgot to mention my Good Witch, Bad Witch cards. I know they have a few fans on AT and elsewhere, but I just find them too "cute" to take seriously, and I find the cards to be a little small, and I have small hands and even standard sized cards make for awkward shuffling!

I can't believe I just complained about small cards, lol....

Krystal
I don't really care for small cards either. I have the Good Witch, Bad Witch cards and I don't use them now that I think of it. And that's probably why!
 

nortytiger

the Enchanted tarot-Zerner-Farber.

I recently decided I should try some different decks as I felt that I should have a wider range of styles and the Enchanted seemed to fit the remit for a "light" deck.

I now realise why it was cheap on ebay and the person who owned it before me had never taken it out of the box. I havn't either.

I was traumatised for days, it took me right back to the time that my ex-husband bought me a badminton racquet for my birthday (I have never played and I hate sport) and I just looked at it and though "why...."
 

alesia

I'm not really sure on this one. My first four decks are from when I first started reading tarot in the 90's, back when you could only see a few cards before buying a deck. My mom bought the Motherpeace once on the recommendation of an excessively enthusiastic saleslady and after seeing the two sample cards, one of which was the Star; that was definitely a deck she wished she hadn't bought as soon as she opened it. The art was too uneven and my mom is quite conservative. I've never had a disaster on that level, where it goes back in the box and is never seen again. (Hmm... wonder if I could beg it off her and trade it...)

Two of my decks have gotten a lot of use: the RWS and the Russian. The RWS is classic and even though I don't particularly like it I'm glad I got it because it's taught me a lot. (Like, don't read the LWB, and Crowley was right: A.E. Waite does read as though he had a mouth full of potatoes.) The Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg is lovely and detailed and stood by me in some very dark times, even though I can't stand to read with it now.

When I bought the Medieval Scapini and Dragon decks, I was expecting to be able to read with them better than the Rider-Waite-Smith, but at the time I just wasn't reading well, period. The Scapini was overly lewd - didn't help that I was trying to get into the SCA mood at the time and it never really worked - and the Dragon tarot was simply impenetrable: oh look, another dragon flying around, but what does it mean?

Ironically, I picked up the Dragon tarot and used it as a purse deck for a few weeks in July, and it worked great. Not that the deck has changed at all, but my understanding of the deck has grown. I'm still tempted to trade off the Scapini, Dragon, and Russian decks, but at the same time I wonder: will they suit me better at a different time? All of them 'clicked' with me at one point or another, even though they don't now.

I suppose I'll see what happens when the Liber T and Dark Angels get here; Dark Angels I can at least use for a roleplaying group, even though it's more In Nomine than Nobilis, but Liber T seems to be a 'love it or hate it' deck. I'm hoping to love it.