Deck View: ARW Playing Cards

Dynamic. Swiss. Signage.

ARW Playing Cards by Luke Wadey Design is inspired by the use of visual directions and signage around us. The deck adopts an arrow based theme with traditional, typographic crossover aimed mainly at cardists and collectors.

Fully custom, ARW uses arrows through all card faces, one-way card back, and tuck, designed for dynamic, modern simplicity with Swiss design influences and also includes two jokers, a double backer, and a gaff card.

The design and functionality come together to ensure this deck will excel in art of cardistry. ARW Playing Cards is printed by the USPCC on premium bee, crushed stock.

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Here's Your Chance to WIN a Deck of TEMPO Plus

We've partnered up with Ark Playing Card to give you a chance to WIN a deck of TEMPO Plus. The futuristic deck will be launching on Kickstarter 1st of Feb. TEMPO Plus combine two-color UV light fluorescence technology to create the ultimate eye-candy. 

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Under the indoor lighting, tempo's original high-profile pattern design is completely hidden, replaced by the minimalist style of black and white style. When the UV light is turned on and the UV light shines on the cards, the minimalist design elements magically disappear, and instead, a chic trendy style comes soaring back at you.

Head over to our Instagram account (@kardify) and for a chance to WIN the TEMPO Plus sponsored by Ark Playing Cards (Instagram: @arkplayingcard)! The contest closes on 30th January.

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🥦 Fontaines Members Club Release Sold Out. Remainder Decks to be Released Tomorrow!

The Broccoli Fontaines Members Club release are now sold out but Fontaine Cards will be releasing the remainder 450 single decks to the public tomorrow (30th Jan) at 1pm PST, with a maximum of 2 decks per customer - no bricks! These will go extremely quickly.

Also, after the Broccoli release, Fontaine Cards will expand the number of members from 500 to 1000 for the next deck release. So, if you don’t make it into the club for this drop, you may make it in for the next one. 

Broccoli Fontaines are 1 of 2500 decks printed by the USPCC on crushed classic stock. Priced at $15 on fontainecards.com.

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Less Than 24 Hours, The Royal Pizza Palace Playing Cards

Less than 24 hours remaining on Kickstarter! The Royal Pizza Palace playing cards by Riffle Shuffle Creative Space and designed by Basem Amer is a must-have for all Pizza Lovers (who doesn't love pizza?). Two Classic editions are made available during the Kickstarter campaign, Classic Cheese - in yellow, and Classic Veggie - in green. 

The tuck boxes for both editions are embossed with artworks that are designed similarly, with a wooden plank on top. The plank is decorated almost ceremonially and has two rolling pins guarding its sides. In each of the four corners, there are two slices of delicious pizza, with basilic leaves fanned out above them in a wonderful pattern. 

Inside, card backs feature a symmetrical illustration of a traditional clay brick pizza oven, ready to produce a delicious pie for you. The richly colored wooden plank with the most important tool for the creation of the pizza - the rolling pin, delicious ingredients scattered around and a peek into the pizza oven in the middle.



The court cards follow different stories of the staff in the pizza kitchen, from chefs perfecting their well-guarded recipes inherited from their grandmothers, kitchen helpers rushing around to help and sometimes encountering little kitchen mishaps, to delivery guys hurrying to stay on the clock to freshly deliver the pizzas. The vibrant courts reinforce the fun vibe of the deck! 

The Ace of Spades has been cleverly designed to fit not one, but two pizzas. They are placed on their respective wooden planks with the handles pointing towards the tip of the spade. The rest of the aces also follow the same flavor profile as the ace of spades, each infusing different elements from our pizza-olio to give you authentic pizza choices. 

Finally, the jokers are designed to look like two sealed envelopes, one red and one black, ready to be sent off. They are closed with a traditional wax seal with a crown imprint in the middle. What is inside is highly classified as it is the secret recipe from our pizza-olio. 

The Royal Pizza Palace deck is a pleasure for all your senses, and comes with juicy illustrations and delicious designs! The cards will print by Taiwan Playing Card Co (TWPCC) with their latest softer paper stock named the Luxury Stock. 

Pledge starts at $12 on Kickstarter. 

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Vote for 2020's Deck of the Year, Brought to you by UC & Portfolio52

The United Cardists annual Deck of the Year Awards are back! Playing card collectors, magicians, cardists, and more come together from every corner of the web to reflect upon all the amazing decks to have been released throughout the past year. The DOTYs aims to celebrate the hobby of playing cards by officially recognizing those that exceed in excellence and of which have really stood out among the rest in 2020.

This year, the UC community has partnered up with Portfolio52 to bring to you an all-new, custom-designed voting system built from the ground up to make participation in voting easier than ever before! With 15 different DOTY Award categories, the best of the best are nominated in a wide variety of aspects from tuck to aces, pips, gaffs, backs, and everything in between! 

Categories for ‘Best Magic Deck’, ‘Best Cardistry Deck’ and ‘Best Non-Poker Deck’ ensures that there’s something for everyone and the entire community is invited to let your voice be heard by voting on all their favorite decks to determine which decks truly deserve to come out on top and earn the coveted title of ‘DECK OF THE YEAR’!

Voting is only open until Sunday, January 31. Click here to vote now! Results will be e announced approximately one week after voting closes.

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Ketchup & Fries Playing Cards, Less Than 54 Hours on Kickstarter

Ketchup and Fries Playing Cards is the first project from Fast Food Playing Cards, headed by Rich Li, a magician and graphic designer from New York City. The goal is to combine the fast-food culture with playing card culture. According to Rich,

There are three things that I absolutely love: Sleight of Hand, Graphic Design, & FAST FOOD! I have been performing sleight of hand for more than 5 years now, and I thought to myself, why not combine all my hobbies together and create my very first deck of playing cards. After countless trials and errors, I have illustrated what I think combines the fast food culture with playing cards - Welcome to FFP! The Fast Food Playing Cards.

As the name suggests, the fully custom deck comes in two versions- Tomato Ketchup and French Fries. The playful back designs for both decks follow a streamlined design that is eye-catching when you fan or spread out the cards. Also, the decks are carefully marked by suits. 

The court cards of the Ketchup and French Fries have been redesigned with dynamic colors and playful twist, all while keeping the traditional elements of playing cards in place. Rich continued,

The court cards are one of my favorite highlights while designing the decks. I have taken my own experience while eating at multiple fast-food chains to illustrate each court card that best represents themselves. Some are even inspired by famous fast-food chains with my own touches on the design.

The ace of spades is outlined with the classic suit with Fries and Ketchup mixed up in the middle as one would see in a fast-food commercial. The rest of the aces are also infused with different details representing their contents of ingredients. The number cards are colored accordingly to the back design. 

Each edition comes with THREE Jokers! The three jokers tell a continuous action of either finishing up a pack of fries or emptying a ketchup bottle. 

 
The decks are packaged in a unique tuck case both representing their respective versions. The tuck case of the French Fries Edition is “Die Cut” to look and serve as an actual packaging of a pack of fries. The entire tuck case is redesigned throughout its structure to make it look like a French fries packaging. 

There is even a list of ingredients and barcodes on the packaging that might put a smile on your face. The tuck case of the ketchup is designed to include everything you might see on a ketchup pack, but with more hidden details. 

For the magician, the back of the tuck case contains a list of ingredients... at first glance. In actual fact, they are hidden reveals where magicians can perform prediction routines! Very cool! 

Printed by USPCC with their Premium Bee Crush Stock, Air-cushion Finish. Pledge starts at $12 on Kickstarter.

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Alex Pandrea Respond to House of Playing Cards' Mystery Brick Controversy

The House of Playing Cards' Mystery Brick has begun to arrive for those who managed to purchase them last month, during the holiday season. Many took to Reddit to express their disappointment about the brick's 'rare' decks. Here are a few examples: Card Card To put these comments into context, here's the description on the original product page:

LIMITED BRICKS AVAILABLE. GUARANTEED RARE DECK(S) INCLUDED. ONCE SOLD OUT THAT'S IT

You’ve NEVER seen a mystery deck deal like this one! We hunted down some of our best and most requested inventory and set aside some EXCLUSIVE decks just for you! This holiday season, we want to save you from the insane aftermarket prices of sold out decks! So we set aside limited quantities of rare decks, sold out decks, best sellers and a few surprises if you’re lucky! Savings are great, but why not save in style?

Some of accused Alex Pandrea of false advertising as the photo used on the product page does not reflect reality: Card Card Here is a snippet of Alex's response. Full Reddit thread here. Alex on HOPC:

First off, I want to start by saying that in my 10 years of producing playing cards my number 1 goal was to provide good quality cards at a great price. I've always kept my prices as low as possible so that people can afford them without feeling ripped off (like other companies and decks being released today). I don't think anyone in the community sells decks at under $10...NOC Originals being $5-$7. I fought hard to keep these prices this low over many years, despite price increases every year from USPCC, tuck cost and paper cost increases, shipping increases, warehouse and fulfillment fee increases, etc. I constantly do many deals and sales on my site where you can always have a chance to save even more - so I can say with confidence that we have thousands of people who love us for this and I am proud of what we've done.

On the Mystery Brick:

Now regarding the decks themselves. ALL decks advertised in the ad copy where used for the 200 mystery bricks. I would NEVER advertise a list like that if I weren't including them in the product. Why would I ever do that? To risk my companies 10 years of reputation on 1 product? No way! There were in total 50 mixed decks of Fontaines, DB decks, Orbits, Anyone etc, in the bricks- not including the Fort NOC deck, Pink NOC3000X2, and Survival Winter NOCs (which some might not consider rare but I guarantee they are rarer than the decks in the photos!!). These are also all sold out decks etc. I'm truly sorry if you didn't like those decks. I guess I have to start creating something other than boring old NOCs :/ WITH THAT BEING SAID - I should NOT have used the photos I used for the promotion. That is on me 100% - no excuses for that.

Alex's apology:

I am truly sorry that I did. I regret it not only because of this ordeal - but because it was a shitty thing to do now looking back, and obviously gave the wrong impression about the product. I didn't think that one through, so for that I am very sorry. We actually took the initial photos of our "rare" decks that we had way before coming up with doing a mystery brick. We didn't know exactly what we were going to use those decks for. Just sell them for the holidays? Include them as gifts? Mystery decks? At that point there was no plan. It was only after deciding to do the brick did I decide to use those particular photos to show off some dope decks. It was a very last minute thing - and we printed the brick boxes very quickly, snapped a few more photos, and just didn't think about it. It's obvious now that we should have realistic photos of examples of bricks you can possibly get.

Next steps:

Ok, so what now? Well for one, that probably was the last mystery brick I'll do haha :)) - I know, good riddance. Second, if I ever do similar bundles or different types of product I will make sure to be 100% transparent with all promotional material - AKA don't scam people I guess. Lastly, if you still feel like your brick was a "rip-off" and you got decks below the value you paid then I would agree you deserve a refund. It's the right thing to do. This is why I am going to open up my private shop email for those of who want to reach out to me personally about this. The address is : alexpandreashop AT gmail. You will be speaking DIRECTLY with me so you can let me know about your dissatisfaction.

Very well written response. A few Reddit users have started receiving their refunds: Card

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Deck View: Iron Spades Playing Cards

Gaming. Stunning. Bold.

Iron Spades is a premium deck of playing cards successfully on Kickstarter as part of Roxley Games' Iron Clays, a gaming counter for poker and all tabletop games. The stunning deck is designed by the award-winning Chad Michael Studio.

Iron Spades sports a gold/green colorway and prominently features the green color palette throughout. The deck is semi-custom with custom Joker and bold Ace of Spades. The courts are pretty much standard with updated color palette to match the overall look and feel of the deck.

The cards are encased in an eye-catching gilded letterpressed tuck box by Clove St. Printed in collaboration with Art of Play by the United States Playing Card Company.

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What is the Fontaine Club?

Fontaine Cards has just introduced the Fontaine Club. This initiative is the follow-up to Fontaine's last two deck releases where early orders were placed via email before the public release. According to founder Zach Mueller on Instagram (@fontainecards),

It worked, but a lot of people got left out. So now we’re going to try Fontaine Club. We will allow 500 people into Fontaine Club to begin with. These 500 people will get to make club member account, and gain access to our web store.

However, to give every member equal access, Fontaine Cards will announce a “Members Only” drop time for new decks, so all members have a fair shot at getting them. So, it will basically be similar to a normal drop, but with only Fontaine Club members. 

As this is still in the experimental stage, more members may be added as time goes on. For the non-members, Zach Mueller continued,

We will also keep a very small portion of the stock for a public online release to make sure EVERYone has some chance of getting them.

To apply to become a member, please email fontainecenter@fontainecards.com over this weekend and the team at Fontaine Cards will email you if you are selected. Good Luck!

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Lost Angelus' Top 5 Playing Card of 2020

We've revealed our first 'Deck of the Year' a few weeks ago and our Top12 decks of 2020 last month. To give a different view, we've reached out to Jeremy Griffith or popularly known as @lost_angelus on Instagram, one of the most knowledgeable card men around for his list of top 5 decks of 2020. Here we go (Jeremys' comments in italics):

5. Vanille

Every deck this guy releases is EDC level for me. Great designs, cool color schemes, and excellent quality.

4. Mono-Xero

 

Thin stock, two-way design. Loved this deck from the moment I opened it. I’m late to Luke’s design work, and I’ve very much enjoyed since.

3. Standards Flag Edition

              

What’s not to love about this deck? The tuck, the intricacy, the theme. This one wins in my mind because every aspect of it took serious craftsmanship.


2. Tough Luck

As far as I’m concerned, Docs is the breakout playing card company of 2020. They’ve worked their butts off to become a company that produces quality goods for people like us, and they have done no less on this deck. The tuck is amazing! And the cards stand up to the hardest work I could put into them. 

1. Republic No. 03, Lost Angelus Edition

       

Because you can’t buy these anymore, this isn’t self-promotion. This deck has my top vote because it represents everything that has my heart; my family, my friends, the card community. No expense about this deck was spared. The cards are exceptional, the tuck has a simple elegance to it, and they last! Plus, they were made for me as a gift. No money changed hands, no contracts needed signing, just a number of friends reaching out to me and giving me a dream deck because they knew I’d love it. Seriously, what more could I have asked for out of a deck?


Honorable Mention:
The Boy Who Cried Magic Playing Cards. The only reason these weren’t in the top five is because that I just got them. But I’ve come to really appreciate Andi’s work over the course of 2020. And I love the workability of it. Think about it, you co-own one of the major magic companies in the world, you could build whatever deck you want, and instead of layering it with foil and set in a hand-carved mahogany box, you instead make an accessible solid deck that floats the line between “worker deck” and “collector's item”. I love that!

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Tigers V2 Matchbox Edition Playing Cards Releasing TODAY

Today, Jackson Robinson will release the Kings Wild Tigers V2 Matchbox Edition Playing Cards. Inspired by the bold designs and colors of vintage matchboxes, the deck pays homage to the beautiful world of matchbook printing of the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

Fully custom with hand-illustrated artwork, the Tigers feature beautiful bold designs, and colors of vintage matchbox artwork feature a classic mirrored casino-styled back design, unique aces, and all-tiger court cards. 

A vibrant color palette and design have been applied to the vintage court cards, giving it a striking look throughout. 

 
The deck is secured in a vintage matchbox-styled tuck case with an actual sandpaper strike strip. The tuck is capped with a fully custom hand-numbered vintage-styled tax stamp. Only 1000 produced and available on kingswildproject.com. The first 100 orders will receive a signed copy of the deck.

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Adventurer Playing Cards by Riffle Shuffle

Adventurer Playing Cards is the follow-up to Explorer Playing Cards released last year on Kickstarter by Riffle Shuffle. The fun and vibrant deck is designed by David Huynh and the featured hero is ready to set foot on the land of the mysteries. 

Inside, the card back features the hero character in a lovely symmetrical design, embellished with lush jungle landscape and picturesque backdrop of a mountain range. The backs are designed in the green color scale. 

The court cards consist of silhouettes of kings, queens, and jacks and tell a story of an exciting adventurer where you can witness beautiful sunsets, jungle life, and even the treasure hunts accompanied by a curious monkey. 

 
The deck is packaged in an eye-catching tuck box with a wrap-around design of a gorgeous mountain range in the shades of green and a lake adding to the ambiance.

Explorer Playing Card is printed by the United States Playing Card Company on air Cushion Finish with the legendary Bee Casino Stock. 

Now on riffleshuffle.com for $10.

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Issue #44 of Kardify Magazine is NOW on Patreon

Issue #44 of Kardify Magazine is NOW on Patreon in both EPUB and PDF format! Patrons who pledged $3 or more will be able to download the latest issue from our Patreon page. This issue compiles selected articles published from mid-December to mid-January. Deck images, articles, and news to keep you informed and up-to-date with the latest playing card news, releases, and previews. If you love playing cards, you will love Kardify Magazine!

Also, don't forget to check out our other cool reward tiers on Patreon! The tiers include monthly desktop and smartphone wallpapers, a mystery deck shipped to you every 4 months of ongoing contribution, social media shout-outs, and multiple sponsorship tiers! Check it out!

Funds received from the magazine will help us keep the site running and growing, and bringing new quality content to you. Our aim is to support designers by backing crowdfunded projects and supporting magic and playing cards retailers with their new releases. If you want to support us, please head over to our Patreon page. If you have an idea for an article you would like us to pursue, do get in contact with us. We hope you enjoy the read. In this issue:

+ The Origin:  Currently funding on Kickstarter, Skymember Presents’ “The Origin” is designed based on a monumental (Genesis) and implanted the “secret story” of playing cards. The deck hit 200% of its funding goal in the 24 hours!

+ Deck of the Year:  Celebrating the past year in the playing card industry and looking ahead to the year to come. Find out who won the biggest recognition of our inaugural ‘Deck of the Year'.

+ Mandolorian: Theory11 dropped the new deck for pre-order featuring the lone gunfighter, Din Djarin in the outer reaches of the galaxy as he journey throughout the galaxy to protect The Child from capture by the Empire. 

+ XQ Forty-Nine: Magic Encarta’s colorful vibrant new deck crafted for cardistry designed by award-winning Digital-Artist Thorsten Schmitt.             

+ Generation One: Check out Kier Gomes's eye-catching deck designed in collaboration with Luke Wadey. 

+ Cabinetarium: Check out Art of Play's latest deck, a shuffled gallery of surrealist fantasy, unlike any other deck of playing cards you have ever seen.  

+ ZDV2- Retro: From December Boys, the new version of Z-Deck is heavily inspired by the 80s and vaporwave aesthetic, aimed for a nostalgic yet retro-futuristic look.

+ Slicers: A look at Organic Playing Card's striking deck that captures the vibe of the fall season.

… and more! 45 pages of articles and deck images. Enjoy!

7 Questions with Marco Dyziek and André Preller of Pixel Kingdom Playing Cards

Pixel Kingdom playing cards is a meticulously designed deck by Artur Fast and produced Plan52 Playing Cards by Marco Dyziek and André Preller. The deck is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter and handcrafted pixel by pixel specifically for collectors, dreamers, retro gamers and card enthusiasts in mind. 

The FULLY custom deck is inspired by 16-bit graphics in a modernized way and a romantic representation of the Middle Ages and how retro PC games looked. The court cards in particular are inspired by fairy tales, ballads, and retro games like King's Quest. All designs are influenced by the traditional court cards and are easily recongnizable. 

The custom pips are smaller than traditional to emphasise the delicate pixel art and the aces are highly ornamented and intricately designed. The card backs are coloured in a rich red and designed to be elegant, intricate, and full of little details. The deck is pacakged in an elegant tuck box featuring embossing and gold foil.

We had a quick chat with Marco and André last week about the design, inspiration, and design process behind Pixel Kingdom Playing Cards.

For those of us who don’t know, can you tell us about yourself and what is your design background?
Hey, we are André and Marco. Together we have more than 15 years of experience in the game industry working on different projects in different positions. We enjoy all kinds of games and love to bring fun to everyone. We also have experience working with various artists and we have a lot of connections to bring to the world of playing cards. Stay tuned for that. 

 

Can you describe the Pixel Kingdom Playing Cards and why you’re passionate about them?
They are beautiful 16-bit pixel art game cards designed by Artur Fast, with a medieval setting and a very classic video game background story. We love 16-bit pixel art, and we were very careful to make sure that you could still see the individual pixels on the printed card, even if they are very small.

It was very important to us to give each court card some sort of character, but we also wanted to make sure you could find similarities to the traditional courts. We are passionate about the deck because it brings back for us the feeling of the good old adventures of Sierra, especially King's Quest, from which it is largely inspired, making it a personally satisfying mix of old school games and playing cards.

We love all kinds of art and also the design process behind it. We really tried to put all our passion and experience into this deck. 

Walk us through the process you took to design the deck. How did you come out with the idea?
To answer that question, let's take a step back and also talk about how this deck came to be:

As we mentioned, we come from a game design background, so we originally brainstormed with Artur because we wanted to work on a pixel art game. His initial concepts for the game reminded us a bit of a playing card and it inspired us more than any other game project at the time. He then created a card design just for fun and we were hooked on his take on the subject. Based on that, we started building everything around it. One of the first things was to move from 8-bit to 16-bit because we wanted to do more than the decks that already existed. After that, we started coming up with ideas for the story of the deck to give more depth to the court cards and get more and more in tune with the setting. We drafted the back design early in development, but we revised it after we had the theme and court cards set. 

We really wanted to involve the community in the design and find out what people thought about our vision, so we started posting on United Cardists. We gathered feedback and played around with the little details that we all love in playing cards.

What was your most brilliant breakthrough when designing the deck?
The biggest challenge was finding a way to get the 16-bit pixel style on paper and make it pixel perfect. We tried several things, even vectorizing the artwork, but in the end we just went for the maximum quality that uspcc allows, and it worked. Sometimes it's the simplest solutions that work best.

The other thing was to find the final style, we redesigned the back based on the final courts to make everything fit together. We'll write an update on that soon and reveal different drafts of the back design.

With so many playing card projects competing for funding, why should potential backers choose your deck?
It's the first deck with 16-bit rather than 8-bit pixel graphics that we know of, which means it's a nice new addition to your collection. As we said, we made sure to pack some retro game design storytelling into each court card to give them more personality. You get a free pixel kingdom solitaire game, which might be nice if you're into that. 

Beyond that, this is the start of something bigger, think of it as the start of a series of art decks with different artists and styles. We want to bring different famous and unknown game artists into the amazing world of playing cards to create beautiful designs for everyone. To make this happen we are using our connections and network to reach out to many artists we have worked with before. It will be fun to collaborate on something completely different. 

What’s next? Can we expect more deck designs in the future?
Absolutely!

We already have at least two more decks planned with two different amazing artists and we are thinking about more for the future. One of the artists is responsible for a critically acclaimed game with international success in its genre. That's all we're giving away for now.

We're cooking it low and slow, letting the artists set their own pace to comfortably bring their vision to life and deliver the best quality. 

 

Finally, what are your favorite playing cards?
The Name of the Wind Art Deck by Elodin Enterprises is our all time favorite. The artwork is phenomenal and we always enjoy looking at it from time to time. Last year’s favorite was without a doubt The Tale of the Tempest Playing Cards by The Gentleman Wake. We love the elegance of the deck. In general, we love decks with a great theme that is well executed and carried throughout the design. 

Thank you for your time Marco and André! If you like what you've read here and want to support Pixel Kingdom Playing Cards, you can find it on Kickstarter Here! 

Pixel Kingdom Playing Cards will be printed by the USPCC with Air-Cushion Finish. Pledge starts at $14 for a single deck on Kickstarter.

 

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