Good Fortune Tarot

[Rodney]

I bought this deck by Barbra Moore (author) and Jessica Roux (artist) in a Llewellyn sale a couple of months ago, but I only just tonight got around to entering it into my spreadsheet, which meant taking a GOOD 👀 at it. How interesting that there are TdM touches added to what's basically RWS imagery! The cards are a little thin for my taste, but they are borderless. The strangest thing to me is that they gilded the pages of the book. I have NEVER had to crack a book before, only decks! I literally have had to separate more than one page from its preceding and/or following page. Bizarre that they didn't test that out before doing it to all of the books!

 

I'm coming towards the end of a non-tarot project that will free up lots of my time. I'll have to add this deck to my ever-increasing list of decks to study some day...

 

Anyone here using it? Thoughts? Worth the effort to find the Marseille bits or just use as a RWS variant?

[Raggydoll]

2 hours ago, Rodney said:

The strangest thing to me is that they gilded the pages of the book

That is unusual indeed. Are the pages white with gilded edges? Or did they use tan paper to get an aged look? I’m trying to wrap my head around why they’d decide to spend extra money on that. 

[Rodney]

White-ish pages  with a medium blue (?) gilding.

 

I've supported WAY more crowdsourced decks than I will admit, and those creators always get test prints before authorizing the full print run. I can only guess that Llewellyn didn't (and I somehow lost track of when they started printing in China vs the U.S.), so they had no idea that was going to happen?

 

Past time for bed, but since I'm on vacation Friday, I can take pics on Thursday if people want.

[DanielJUK]

We would love to see them, it sounds so interesting (in your own time 🙂 )

[Rodney]

Here are some pics.

 

The coloring is a grayish-blue I guess. The center of the book shows where the treatment is already rubbing off from me thumbing through the book...

 

 

Then here's a pic of the book partialy open to get another view of the edging and the page color:

 

Finally, here's my finger between two pages that are stuck together because of the edge treatment:

 

 

[Raggydoll]

4 hours ago, Rodney said:

Here are some pics.

 

The coloring is a grayish-blue I guess. The center of the book shows where the treatment is already rubbing off from me thumbing through the book...

 

 

Then here's a pic of the book partialy open to get another view of the edging and the page color:

 

Finally, here's my finger between two pages that are stuck together because of the edge treatment:

 

 

Oh that is disappointing 😟 I have had gilded journals with similar issues. They definitely should have done a test run for this. 

[Rodney]

7 minutes ago, Raggydoll said:

Oh that is disappointing 😟 I have had gilded journals with similar issues. They definitely should have done a test run for this. 

Right? If this were some random person's first crowdsourcing campaign and they went for all the bells and whistiles without confirming their viability, I could forgive them their naivete. But Llewellyn is one of the BIG PLAYERS in the tarot market! Nobody put a test run through its paces to ensure the reality and the vision would exist anywhere NEAR close to the same ballpark? 🤯🤯🤯 is an understatement on my part!

 

And now I'm in the mood to see if there is a feedback mechanism on the Llewellyn website to tell them EXACTLY how I feel about this deck... 😈

[Raggydoll]

3 minutes ago, Rodney said:

Right? If this were some random person's first crowdsourcing campaign and they went for all the bells and whistiles without confirming their viability, I could forgive them their naivete. But Llewellyn is one of the BIG PLAYERS in the tarot market! Nobody put a test run through its paces to ensure the reality and the vision would exist anywhere NEAR close to the same ballpark? 🤯🤯🤯 is an understatement on my part!

 

And now I'm in the mood to see if there is a feedback mechanism on the Llewellyn website to tell them EXACTLY how I feel about this deck... 😈

It’s very surprising that Llewelyn would make such a rookie mistake. And I do think you should give them this honest feedback. They deserve to know, and other potential buyers should be told as well! 

[Rodney]

52 minutes ago, Raggydoll said:

It’s very surprising that Llewelyn would make such a rookie mistake. And I do think you should give them this honest feedback. They deserve to know, and other potential buyers should be told as well! 

Funny you should say that. Before seeing your message, I sent the following email to Llewellyn Customer Support...

 

I need to provide some feedback about an item I purchased. Looking at my account, I don't know which is the relevant info, so I'll add both here:

 

Process Number:	########
Document Number:	########

I ordered The Good Fortune Tarot on one of the above numbers. It arrived, I thumbed through it, and I was good. Now that I'm entering it into my database, I am MUCH less than pleased! 

 

Someone apparently had the bright idea to apply a gray-blue edge to the pages of the companion book. Nice idea! But apparently no one tested the idea out before approving the entire print run!

 

It's a little hard to see, but if you look in the center section of the right side of the book, you can see where the edging is already starting to wear off JUST from me thumbing through the book 3, maybe 4, times!

 

WhatEVER treatment was applied to the edges of the pages causes them to STICK TOGETHER in one or more places! Here's a picture of my THUMB between two pages that are stuck together at their tops!

 

If this had been the result of someone's first crowdsourcing campaign and they hadn't known to test out all the bells and whistles to make sure that idea and reality were in the same ballpark, that could've been forgiven. Llewellyn is ONE OF THE BIG PLAYERS in the tarot market! NO ONE got a test print of the book and put it through its paces to make sure it lived up to what I THOUGHT was a Llewellyn standard? I am shocked, appalled and disappointed! 

 

I HAD been purchasing items based on my history with Llewellyn as I bought my first Llewellyn deck in the early '90s, and currently own 87 Llewellyn decks. (That doesn't include the Lo Scarabeo decks onto which Llewellyn slaps their ISBN causing ALL KINDS of confusion among tarot deck buyers...) It was either the Robin Wood or (Cannon Reed's) Witches Tarot. So I NEVER needed to investigate anything because I knew what I was getting. (Or at least I thought I did...) From now on, I will be researching any and EVERY Llewellyn item BEFORE I purchase it. Fool me once? Shame on you! Fool me twice? Shame on me!

[Raggydoll]

And now they know! 😁 Hopefully they will respond and take the criticism on board! I’m thinking they need to reprint that guidebook because surely you can’t be stuck with something like that! It’s well below their standard! 

 

 

[Natural Mystic Guide]

3 hours ago, Raggydoll said:

It’s very surprising that Llewelyn would make such a rookie mistake. And I do think you should give them this honest feedback. They deserve to know, and other potential buyers should be told as well! 

Well, Schiffer Publishing is also one of the big players.  When I received the Dark Goddess Tarot from them, and I had bought if off of their website -- there was a huge problem with the gilding on the cards.  As soon as I started getting into the deck, I realized this.  My husband shot a video of my trying to separate the cards that were stuck because of the gilding.  Almost every single card was damaged because of the gilding with ugly white marks on the card surfaces where paper from another card had stuck on to the face of the card.  Really disfiguring.  I sent this video and a letter to Schiffer.  I never received any responses from them.  Regrettably there was quite a delay between when I had bought the deck, on sale, from their website and when I got into the deck -- because I live in Bali and had to have this deck couriered by hand by a friend.  Very disappointing.  See the white marks on the bottom of this card.

Edited September 20, 2024 by Natural Mystic Guide
added graphic

[gregory]

But but but - how is the DECK ?

[Raggydoll]

25 minutes ago, Natural Mystic Guide said:

Well, Schiffer Publishing is also one of the big players.  When I received the Dark Goddess Tarot from them, and I had bought if off of their website -- there was a huge problem with the gilding on the cards.  As soon as I started getting into the deck, I realized this.  My husband shot a video of my trying to separate the cards that were stuck because of the gilding.  Almost every single card was damaged because of the gilding with ugly white marks on the card surfaces where paper from another card had stuck on to the face of the card.  Really disfiguring.  I sent this video and a letter to Schiffer.  I never received any responses from them.  Regrettably there was quite a delay between when I had bought the deck, on sale, from their website and when I got into the deck -- because I live in Bali and had to have this deck couriered by hand by a friend.  Very disappointing.  See the white marks on the bottom of this card.

Oh that is really disappointing 😞

[Rodney]

On 9/20/2024 at 1:53 AM, gregory said:

But but but - how is the DECK ?

The deck has no edge treatment, making the edge treatment on the book that much weirder. Borderless cards, Strength at 8 and Justice at 11, numbered but unnamed Death. Standard LLewellyn cardstock.

 

And Llewellyn Customer Support never replied to my feedback email.

[Raggydoll]

8 hours ago, Rodney said:

And Llewellyn Customer Support never replied to my feedback email.

😒 Send another one? Or post to their social media and let them know you still haven’t received a reply regarding your defect guidebook?

[gregory]

Or email Barbara Moore - I've done that and got results....

[DanielJUK]

The tarot publishers used to have such great customer service, that sounds really disappointing 😭

Maybe like everything, they have less staff working there now. Hopefully you will get a reply eventually @Rodney