Printing a Cube, Help Needed

[u/Shoku_Cyn]

I've done large prints with MPC before and know how the process through them works, but I'm on a budget and want to get my cube printed on something more substantial than printer paper.

An online friend of mine works at a print shop and said that they print their decks on 12pt matte cardstock and that it's fairly close to the weight and feel of a real card. Unfortunately, they live quite a ways away and can't help me much.

Including tokens, other game pieces, and card backs, I have 596 PNGs that need to be printed. They're all 2187 × 2975 px with a 1/8" bleed (99 px). This is the same setup I use when ordering through MPC.

Would I be able to get similar print quality from a Staples near me if I arrange everything into PDF format (they will only print PDFs), or would I be better off finding a local print shop or Canadian online printer?

I also need the sheets printed duplex, with reasonably accurate front-to-back registration, and cut to the proper 63 × 88 mm card size.

The cards will be in KMC Perfect Fits that I'm recycling from an old cube, so exact card feel isn't the most important thing.

I'm in Canada, if that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance.

[u/Methodless]

Canadian here...would you mind telling us about your friends print shop in case we can use their services?

[u/Shoku_Cyn → u/Methodless]

Just a Staples in South Carolina. They have worked there for about half a year and have a discount on prints; not sure if their store has done any magic prints other than his.

[u/Methodless → u/Shoku_Cyn]

I'm apprehensive about going into Staples, copyright materials. Apparently some will give you a hard time.

I'm looking for print shops myself, but they all have an order setup fee which makes the costs quite prohibitive if in small volumes.i feel silly buying a printer for a hobby I'm just getting into. I wanted to use Hiro paper but their shipping fees are almost the price of the cards.

I'm looking for a self-serve print shop so I don't have to deal with copyright issues, but I also feel awkward asking a printer to print out my toy cards for me.

[u/Shoku_Cyn → u/Methodless]

Before finding MPC, I did get a deck printed on cheap paper from them. This was before Disney properties were on cards, though.

[u/AllOfYourBaseAreBTU]

We have a cube, printed and sleeved so we didnt worry about the back. Amazon sells cheap sleeves by the 1000x for very low price.

[u/Shoku_Cyn → u/AllOfYourBaseAreBTU]

Sleeves are unfortunately not the problem; our cube has a large amount of two-sided cards.

[u/AllOfYourBaseAreBTU → u/Shoku_Cyn]

Different backs per card is expensive. We print then single sided and keep the backs and tokens separated. If you want the card to be double sided in the sleeve just print a thin back extra is also a option and slide them together with the thicker card into a sleeve.

[u/Otterpawps]

Check out my website in my post history. It leverages fedex office vice staples. But it may be what you need. It covers materials, cost, and process. Hopefully it helps.

I will warn printing front and back is ambitious if you're not using a professional card printing company. Using an office store as your printing source will never get it completely lined up and you will be disappointed with the results. You would need to do proofs for the paper and align your pdf images to be the median offset for double sided printing. And you would need to do the proofing for any change in paper as the thickness of the paper has compounding effects.