Is making your life complicated really worth-while???

I see it from a value added perspective. The plastic is much higher quality, will last longer, and will really WOW your fan's. I see you get excited about the idea of having these awesome plastic cards....I think that's exactly what your fan's will do. Man these cards are AWESOME!!

I realize you can't eat all the cost of the plastic cards because money is money, and you need to be in the Green but I take a long term perspective on eating the cost based on the 1000 fan rule. If you just scratch by in the green now while building trust with your customers and demanding an amazing standard of quality for your fan's now, later you may be able to make up those margins on the expansion pack cards, special interest cards or rare cards!! In the beginning it would be hard to sell an expensive game because it has plastic cards. The average person wouldn't realize why the price is high, unless you spend much time and effort educating them. Later when your customers buy the game and see what an amazing deal they got on such a high quality game, they will totally understand why the expansion pack cards are expensive, and they will be happy to pay the premium at which time you make up for lost money on the first print run of the game. IMHO

What about sending the plastic cards to TGC and having them add them to your game? Will they do that?

Also, I feel like your a great option to partner with someone like me to help pay for the landed cost to get your game manufactured in China at a very reasonable cost, and then benefit from your already good following and email list. When comparing my China numbers to TGC there is so much more profit to be had and the quality isn't different. Where is the Manufacture of these plastic cards?

A few years ago I was working with that "one off shop" to do art and manufacture. At that time I wanted a US penny in my game. After talking with the manufacture in China it was determined that I could send out a bag of Pennies to China and they would put them in my finished game. It was no problem, and how can you get a component manufactured for cheaper than a US Penny??????? hahahahahaha

By plastic card, do you mean ID card printers?

Because those plastic cards are relativevely thick. One of them that I hold in my hand is 1 mm thick.

Now depending on the type of game it could work. For example, in "From collar to crown"(or to court the king), it's a dice game where the cards are tapped for special abilities. Which means that they are never shuffled, and you do not need many hundreds of them. So it works.