Arcane contest winners announced

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October 30, 2009

The Joker has been busy indeed over the last few days, but she has finally decided to heap some niceties on those of you who braved the largest, biggest release of a custom deck yet. These winners were randomly chosen from customers who ordered Arcane decks during the first two days of availability. Congratulations to our Arcane contest winners, and to everyone who contributed to a record-breaking day.

Lane C. Thompson won the uncut sheet, the lucky dog.

Winners of the free Arcane stainless steel clip are:

Jack Champagne

TJ Bourne

Ian J. Throckmorton

Mitchell D. Berger

Anthony Nowak

And the winners of free black Arcane decks are:

Philip E. McDonough

Mathew J. Kenward

Ronald Phifer

Frank Spies

Kevin Spohr

Stephen Meli

Nathan J. Parsons

Aaron Kupferman

Barton Snell

Rick Gatt

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Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under Ellusionist Products, General

Arcane sales break Ellusionist records

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October 29, 2009

A little perspective is in order:

When Ellusionist first released the Black Tiger, the first edition of it sold out in four days. That print run was about 5,000.
When Ellusionist released the Shadow Masters deck, we sold about 3,000 in a 12-hour period.

So, given everything that happened on release day, including enduring a DoS attack just minutes after the sales page went live, we were blown away when we saw that more than 6,000 decks of Arcane playing cards sold in a 12 hour period — roughly 2 a.m. to to 2 p.m. Central. This reaffirms everything we said about how awesome you are. Thanks for making this release a success!

Just because the decks are out doesn’t mean Arcane goodness stops. Keep checking the Arcane page for new performance videos from some top-notch card sharps. And check in tomorrow for the announcement of contest winners.

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Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under Ellusionist Products, General

Servers restored, Arcanes now available

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October 28, 2009

What a humbling day for us at Ellusionist.

We poured five years of work into the Arcane deck. We teased it like crazy over the last few months across the Internet. We inspected it PERSONALLY as it came out of the presses at the U.S. Playing Card Co. We sent out decks to some of the best in the business for reviews and videos. We prepped our servers and secured enough bandwidth for 20 times our normal traffic (based on our last record-selling item) in anticipation for the demand.

And still, we got swamped. Definitely the Joker’s day today.

When the Arcane sales pages went live, we got hit with almost 50 times our normal traffic. Nine hours later, we were still hovering around 30 to 35 times. Some of our buds have joked with us and said, “Well, that sounds like a GOOD problem to have, right?” Ha ha, but not even close. It’s not like we made any money while the servers were down. We drummed up interest and demand to make sales, not create an unquenchable demand. We developed this deck to get it into your hands, so that you can drop some jaws.

We are humbled beyond belief that you gave us that kind of demand. And we’re ticked off that our site crashed on you. Our server techs worked like crazed beavers to get things back up and running. JBone and Dave never slept, they spent so much time working on this. And as of 3 a.m. Central time, we were back up, going at an average of 100 orders an hour. At 3 a.m.

Your loyalty and patience has humbled us more than anything. Like we said earlier, we invested a lot of time and money into making the Arcane deck the way it is, because we believed it was what you wanted. It humbles us all to know that this deck of cards created this unprecedented demand.

You could have bellyached, and raised cain on magic forums. You could have said “Eh, eff it. I’m going to bed.” You could have said, “Never mind, I’m buying something else with my money.” But you didn’t. You hung with us and kept pounding that “Add to Cart” button. We have the best customers in the magic business. We are thankful for you each day, but especially on days like today.

As indicated before, most of the server problems have been worked out, so you shouldn’t have any problems ordering Arcanes now. Knock on wood.

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Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under Ellusionist Products, General

Mitchell gives in-depth look into Arcane

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October 25, 2009

David Mitchell, E’s Web master extraordinaire and head curator of one of the greatest magic libraries in Canada (which happens to be his ultra-secret bunker), has posted a video featuring the Arcane playing cards. He goes WAY in-depth, showing many features of the white and black decks:

What, you want more reviews? We got ‘em. George posted this advance review over at The Magic Cafe. And our friends at .thecuso featured the below video, complete with stern, wagging fingers, card close-ups, sweet flourishes and awesome sound effects. And two middle thumbs, whatever that means:

In less than two days you’ll get your chance to get your very own Arcane decks. You’ll also get a chance to win several cool prizes, including a free deck, a stainless-steel card clip or an ultra-rare uncut sheet of the black Arcane deck. While you wait, you can pimp the desktop of your computer, notebook, netbook or smartphone with the Joker… she won’t mind.

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Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under Ellusionist Products, General

Royal Mail strike messes with U.K. deliveries

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October 24, 2009

Dear magic-loving Britons and U.K. Ellusionist customers:

We do not envy you right now, what with the Royal Mail on strike. First of all, it’s an incredibly detailed yet confusing schedule of strikes you have to deal with. No drivers one day, no carriers the next… yet none of those options help you pay your cell phone bill on time. It’s also a complicated, polarizing issue — mainly because the headlines and photos don’t seem to match.

We can only imagine how your lives are being affected. Seriously: We can joke about how it’s terrible that you might not get Arcanes at the same time as everyone else, but that’s shallow. You have bills to pay and checks to receive. This strike could cost you extra money and may even threaten your ability to care for you and yours.

With all the postal drama, we have some good news at Ellusionist: We offer shipping through UPS. We just checked a fake order of a brick of Shadow Masters to Buckingham Palace and found that our 1- to 3-day and 2- to 5-day options cost a little bit less than USPS Priority Mail. But the best part is that UPS delivers all the way to your doorstep: It does not rely on Royal Mail for any mail delivery. So, you can get your Arcanes on time, after all.

We have no opinions on what needs to be done regarding the strike. We only wish for a speedy, amicable resolution so that you don’t have to put up with this hassle anymore.

Sincerely,
Ellusionist

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Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under Ellusionist Products, General

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