- What's up guys, and welcome back.
Today, I'm joined by a very special guest.
Oh yes, he's full of love and kisses.
Right, you're full of love and kisses?
This is Obi, also known as Obiwan.
Obi, say hi, Obi, say hi.
Obi is a little sausage dog, dachshund.
He's a little harlequin, that's why
he's so cute and colorful, and I don't know why
I'm reviewing my dog right now,
but I just thought you guys wanted to get to know Obi.
He'll be a new number of the blog very soon,
but he wants to go run around and play.
Love you (kissing noises), good boy (kissing noises).
All right, enough of Obi.
Obi, get out of here, go play, go pee on something.
Guys, today is a very cool day because
today I'm going to do a playing card review,
but not only any playing card review, no sir.
We are going to review (gasps) 1st Playing Cards
I've been waiting a very, very long time
to review these cards.
Now, I've got the deck, I've got the tuck case,
put the two together, obviously,
and we're going to take a look at
not only what these cards are made of,
what gaff cards you get, what the jokers
look like, what the faces and aces
and all that stuff looks like.
So without further ado,
if you do like this content and enjoy this channel,
go ahead and hit the like button and show your support.
Subscribe for a new year, let's get into it.
(laid back music)
All right, ladies and gentlemen,
let's have a look at 1st Playing Cards.
Here is the tuck design from 1st Playing Cards.
This is a friend of mine, Abraham Garcia Sanchez,
who is an amazing illustrator,
he helped me out with the entire deck,
with the back design and everything, so thank you to him.
These tuck cases were printed by
Clove Street Press out in San Diego.
Clove Street handles mostly all of
Dan & Dave's custom artwork, as well, for their deck.
They do business cards, they also started
dabbling in playing cards, obviously,
started off with Dan & Dave, and I really like them.
The work that they do is incredible
and I will be using them again on future decks.
This here says 1st Playing Card Co By Chris Ramsay.
Well, I glued this deck together with some hot glue,
which is probably why this seam here is a little large.
They have a much better way of gluing that together
in packaging and that won't show as much.
So that's it for the outside, aside from here.
Once you pop the flap,
you get the nice little logo reveal here in gold, as well.
And on the inside, one of my favorite features
of this entire deck is the inside,
how the inside is also foil stamped with the
repeating 1st, kinda like a simplistic design.
And then, let's get to the cards.
What the deck should look like when you take it out.
Maybe not blank, maybe something else on it,
I'm not too sure, but I'll show you why.
Again, here is the inside of that tuck case.
How neat is that?
Oh, baby.
So first thing's first,
let's have a look at the back design.
The back design on these cards, first of all,
obviously, the inspiration for this
was first, for those of you who don't know,
it is my first solo project,
so the first deck that I did with my own name on it,
that I'm not working with another company.
Yes, I did work with other people on this deck,
but I own the rights to this deck.
This is my first very own deck.
But also, it's a callback to the YouTube community
because you guys have been so supportive to me,
and a lot of times, on videos, my channel
or other channels, some of the first comments
are usually just 'first', and I thought
I'd pay homage to that, so these are
the 1st Playing Cards.
Kind of cool saying just 1st Playing Cards,
as in the first ever.
So the back design obviously has
these two foil stamped gold 1sts all the way to the edge.
Makes for some really interesting fan work and spread work.
Obviously, it just makes you want to fan them out.
If you hold it like this, you can see...
This is one of my favorite features of the deck,
by the way, is this line here,
when you're not fanning it, where you're just holding it.
You can even hold it straight, but if you hold it
on a bit of an angle, you get that gleam,
which looks so rad.
All it makes you want to do is just go, ugh,
just spread cards.
That's all I want to do with these cards,
is just spread them.
You hold them, naturally, you start seeing that line,
you want to just, oh I wanna go and stretch that line out.
It makes for some really cool fans, obviously,
with that gleam and high end feel to it, just enough bling,
just enough bling not to make it go crazy.
It doesn't look like you're holding
a gilded painting from the 1800s.
It has a modern feel to it, has that
Louis Vuitton look to it, but at the same time,
it feels like an ordinary deck of cards.
So obviously, that is also the back design,
incorporates the logo.
There are no markings on this version.
I don't know if I will incorporate markings
in the future, and one of the reasons for that
is that I don't really use markings when I work.
These decks had my style in mind,
and how i work with cards, which is why
it has some other features, which we'll get into.
It does have a nice, subtle goldish-yellow line,
if I could focus, goldish-yellow line going on the outside,
all the way around.
Just a classic classy feel on these decks,
and that is the back design.
Now, for the ad cards.
I chose not to go with any ad cards
and promote myself because I chose
to put that promotion on the joker,
so the jokers are as such.
You have the word joker on each side,
but you also have my logo and my name, here, Chris Ramsay.
And the reason I did that is, once again,
bit of a selfish reason, but first of all,
these are identical, so you can use these
in any magic trick where you would need a duplicate.
But also, for me, it's a bit of a calling card,
and it's not just my logo.
I know on Memento Mori's I had my logos as the jokers,
and you know, people could replicate it or whatever,
I wanted to put my name on these.
Personally when I'm out working
this is also, I don't have business cards,
so this is kinda like my business card,
I just hand 'em a joker and be like here, Google me.
You will also get two extra cards, no ad cards here,
but I chose to go with a duplicate four of spades,
four of spades being my favorite card in the deck,
and as well as a blank card.
And for those of you who have purchased Voodoo,
my favorite walk around go-to trick, that I came up with,
link in the bio if you guys wanna check out Voodoo,
if you wanna practice it yourselves
or perform for yourselves, the reason I incorporated these
is so that I can perform Voodoo in my sets,
and I don't need any extra decks,
all I need is that duplicate and that blank card,
and I'm good to go for performance of Voodoo,
which is really really sweet, but you can also,
very well do color changes with the blank card
or any other routine even Omni deck is something I do
a lot of and so I'll use the blank card to write something
on that, they're very simple to incorporate
in many many various different types of routines.
The rest of the deck comes in a very specific order,
for those of you familiar with Juan Tamariz,
and his work, this comes in a variation of that stack,
obviously all I would have to do is cut it somewhere,
and be good to go, so for those of you
in the know about this,
you won't have to shuffle it to get it to this order,
that's the order it comes in.
For those of you who don't work with this order,
that's completely fine, it just looks like
a shuffled deck of cards in that case,
but for those of you who do it's kinda really fun,
to be able to just open a deck of cards,
not have to go through a whole ritual before,
before getting into this order,
it's kinda for you guys but also for me,
because when I work I like starting the stack,
and then eventually the stack just gets jumbled
after about 20 minutes of play,
and then I'll go into other things such as Voodoo.
So that is the order it comes in.
Let's now have a look at, the court cards.
The court cards look like so, here are the queens.
The court cards I decided to keep standard,
only thing that's different as you guys can notice,
is the color scheme, the color scheme is just a nice
call-back to the back of the cards with that light gray,
and that sort of goldish-yellow,
but I really wanted the pips and the indices
to remain absolutely the same.
Because I didn't want people to be confused
you know when you're giving them something to peek at,
so let's say you're doing a peek or something,
you can look at a card, I didn't want 'em to get confused,
so I wanted these to be very prevalent,
very easily recognizable as these cards
are meant to be used and performed with.
So they all follow that same color scheme,
I wanted the standard faces for this,
specifically, I could've gone custom,
I could've put my face on one of them,
but I got my name on the joker's already,
I think that's more than enough, and on the tuck case.
These cards are meant to be played with,
they're meant to be used by everyone,
and I think, I dunno, I just wanted them to be normal,
a normal looking deck of cards
with a little bit of a twist, that's it.
So those are the face cards,
everything else in this deck is completely standard,
aside from one card, aside from the ace of spades.
Everything else is standard, the ace of spades,
my favorite card in the whole deck obviously,
because it is stamped with that 1st, and by the way,
there's another reason this is 1st playing cards.
These are the first cards in USPCC history,
to have that foil stamping all the way
to the edges of the card,
and that's one of the reasons that this took so long
is 'cause they had to do that testing process,
and that process is an extra process
which is shipped outside of USPCC
and then back to USPCC for final coating and embossing.
This is the first time that's ever been done,
and equally the first time anyone's ever printed
foil stamp on the face of a card,
with using USPCC and so that is a really cool feature,
just a simplistic ace, I just love the way that looks,
it's just super classy and great for photos.
This deck, lovely things about this deck,
is that I love photography
and this is a really aesthetically pleasing
deck of cards if you wanna take photos,
like even right now, look at the framing here,
I could screenshot this and throw that on my Instagram grid.
That is just, it just looks great.
Cards farrow very well, so they were cut upside down,
which they're not traditionally,
so if you put 'em face up or face down
whatever way you wanna do them,
but they will farrow from the top down very nicely.
And now they're out of stack obviously,
but they farrow either way,
so traditionally and non-traditionally,
and once they get worn in they farrow either way.
So here's one of those giant fans,
look at that, how cool is that?
Baby.
The stock is a crushed bicycle stock,
so it is a bicycle not a B stock,
which makes them a tiny bit thinner,
but they're not like super thin,
let me turn this down just a little bit here.
So they're thinner, but they're not incredibly thin,
they're not so thin that you don't wanna use them,
they're just thin enough that you can get
that really nice and easy pinky count,
you can spread 'em out nicely,
LePaul spreads are brilliantly beautiful with these.
But just for the fact that these are kind of thin,
LePaul spreads look really nice with that.
Easy to anti-farrow if that's something you're into as well,
not so easy for me, ah not bad, not bad.
And good for cardistry as well,
obviously they're playing cards
so any playing cards are really good for cardistry.
They just look nice and classy,
but have that modern feel to it.
Let's see if I can pull off that little water bend
that I've been practicing.
Eh not bad, still needs some work.
These are the 1st playing cards,
and that is your first look at them.
They look good, man, they feel good,
and one of the things that I really love,
I had two of these decks sent to me by USPCC.
This one I kept sort of intact, I didn't wanna really touch,
play with, and the other one I just wore out,
I use everyday, I threw 'em in my pocket, sweaty hands,
everything, and they still handle really well.
The feel is very comparable to the Memento Mori's,
and I think that's the closest I could say,
they're not as thin as the Knights,
they feel more like the Memento Mori's.
So I can't wait for you guys to pick these up,
well you have picked them up,
I can't wait for them to arrive,
and for you guys to handle them and feel them
as well as the tuck case and see all the beautiful pictures
and videos you guys are gonna put up.
Be sure to tag me in them, @chrisramsey52 on Instagram,
or on Twitter, and I'll repost some of those for sure.
There you go guys, that's it.
Alright guys that was it for the 1st playing cards review,
hope you guys enjoyed it,
hope you guys enjoyed Obi, Obi enjoyed it.
These cards will be probably shipping out,
starting to ship out next week,
they're in packaging currently.
Obi's just knocking stuff over.
So these cards will be packaged as we speak,
and they will be shipped, starting to ship out next week,
which means if they're shipped out to you
you will be prompted on your PayPal with a tracking number,
which will then lead you to where that package is,
in the world and on it's way to you.
So guys, thanks again for watching this video,
like this video if you did, subscribe to New Year
and we'll see you on the next video.
(light music)