Quick q re playing cards

There is no single GSM, but a good gauge is:

300 gsm 2-ply playing card stock.
Most 2-ply stock has a blue core or a black core.

Pretty acceptable cards can be made out a lighter GSM stock, and a heavier stock is used for super high quality casino-grade stock.

Now, if you don't want to use that you can use a 14 point C2S pretty effectively. It is not 100% opaque, but is close to it if you 100% print the entire back with a dark ink. It chips a little more easily. And it doesn't have quite the "memory" (once bent) that playing card stock has. But it can sometimes be acquired much more cheaply from some manufacturers.

I would never print a card with text that is supposed to be accessed in game below 6 point. 8 to
10 point is better, but 6 point is minimally acceptable. 7 lines of 6 point font is about as much text as a typical person wants to deal with. You can go to a 4 or 5 point font for stuff that is not relevant to game play IF your printer thinks he can legibly print that small (often a matter of the quality of the machines and your choice of fore- and background colors). Go that small only for collector codes or other things that are largely irrelevant to game play but may be referenced once in a great while outside of the game.

Bridge cards are around 90% of the total surface area of a poker card. But since the cost of boxes is also reduced that impacts costs a little if you use card boxes. I'd say, as a rule of thumb, you should expect costs to be 75% to 90% of the cost of Poker cards for Bridge cards, but that _really_ depends on the manufacturer. What you'll often find is that some custom manufacturers primarily work with either bridge-sized cards or poker-sized cards and that they will favorably price on or the other.

Some printers do not cut their sheets for each project, but instead have pre-cut sheets they use for everything. Let's say they have the sheets pre-cut for 56 bridge cards (2 jokers + 2 ad cards). Well, if you need to print 56 poker cards you have to go to a whole extra sheet with tons of wasted paper.

The same problem with costing can occur if you pick a non-standard deck size (# of cards). Some manufacturers cannot even handle a non-standard number of cards per deck. Others end up running onto more pre-cut sheets, etc.

You'll normally get the best prices from people who custom cut their sheets as needed (less wasted paper).

Don't know if any of that is useful since I effectively said, "everything depends, nothing is always, everything is sometimes."

All the printers I've dealt with been happy to help me save money.

In fact, the box size for our new card game was settled on when Delano said "we already have a die cut for this size box that might do the trick for you."

Don't be intimidated by printers. They understand that you're trying to minimize expenses just the same as they are. If a printer isn't helpful, go some place else. The money you're putting out for a print run is substantial, and you need to have someone (preferably everyone) on their end working to make sure the job is done right. The last thing you want is a "this is what you paid for. What? No you never mentioned that you wanted it shrink-wrapped, that'll be an extra $0.50 a game" sort of conversation.