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.

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.

It was purple with some pink and turquoise shading, meant to simulate an iridescent surface. It featured a Bicycle Rider back and a large Ace of Spades. And it landed Jason Brumbalow a job with Ellusionist.

Now, more than five years later after designing that purple Ace of Spades for the Arcane playing cards, Brumbalow is the general manager of Ellusionist. He has designed the DVD artwork for many of E’s project, starting with Stigmata. He also created the Masters ace and Shadow Masters and Vintage 1800s decks. In this podcast interview, he talked about how Arcane came to exist, from a nighttime sketch to what you’ll be able to purchase on Tuesday. He talked in depth about the artwork, the stock, the printing process and how painful it was to see copies of the deck destroyed right out of the printer.

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During the podcast, you’ll hear about a sketch and a purple ace. See them here: (more…)

Bookmark this page and check it often.

Already you can see some of the details about one of the most talked-about decks to hit the market, including one of the pictures and a review from card master Lee Asher (you’ve heard a bunch of E artists in our podcasts rave about his Diving Board Double Lift). In the future, you’ll see more pictures of this incredible deck, some of the best flourishers and magicians in the business making them look even better and firsthand reviews from some of the most respected names in the card-loving community. We’ll also dish out some freebies and roll out a killer contest for release day.

Since the release of E’s last custom deck, we have seen a slew of custom cards hit the market. Most of them are pretty cool and a select few are downright fugly and/or hilarious. But NONE OF THEM have come close to the quality of E’s custom decks, because they don’t take into consideration all of the things we do.

Arcane is a deck made for magicians by the same magicians that started this craze of custom playing cards. We kept some of the best features of our previous decks and improved other features. We put more than five years of work into the graphic design. We improved our signature UV-500 finish. We incorporated unprecedented levels of quality control. The end result is a deck that defines mystery and magic; a deck that lets you perform your favorite sleight of hand, magic tricks or flourishes with power, grace and impact.

Jason Brumbalow, general manager of Ellusionist, recently went to the new manufacturing plant of the U.S. Playing Card Co. in Erlanger, Ky.

Why? No reason. Except to check on the latest round of awesome from Ellusionist. This is the first of a series of video diaries filed by JBone: