Cards to Fit the Tin: Sizing a Deck to Existing Tooling
Almost every card project that reaches us carries the same instruction in the brief: find a tin that fits a poker-sized deck. Or a bridge deck. Or a tarot deck at 70 × 120 mm. The card dimension is treated as fixed, and the packaging becomes the variable to be hunted until something matches.
It is an understandable habit and it is backwards. The search usually ends in one of two places: a tin that is nearly right, in which the deck rattles, or a quotation for new tooling with a lead time the schedule cannot absorb. Neither is necessary, because the fixed thing and the variable thing have been swapped.
The die is the cheap part. The tool is not.
Look at what happens when a deck is manufactured. The cards are printed on large sheets and die-cut to size. That die is steel rule bent to a rectangle with rounded corners: a minor line on the invoice against the print run, made in days, and most card printers hold a wide range of sizes. Moving a deck from 63 × 88 mm to 61 × 87 mm is, from the printer's side, an ordinary conversation rather than a crisis.
Now look at the tin. A tinplate mould is machined steel: weeks of work, a serious capital commitment, and a geometry frozen the moment it exists. New tooling means roughly eight weeks before the first body is formed, then four to six weeks of production, so twelve to fourteen weeks from approval to finished pallets. That is the heavy, slow, immovable object in the project.
The sensible order is to specify the immovable object first. Choose a tin from moulds that already exist, take the card cutting size it gives you, and have the cards cut to it, either by us with the tin or by a card printer of your own. No tooling investment, no tooling wait. Artwork to finished tins in four to six weeks. We have set the two routes side by side in existing moulds versus new tooling.
Not a compromise. An advantage.
We never sell this as settling for something close enough. It is not a near miss on a standard size; it is a better position, for three reasons.
- Nothing is spent on tooling, and nothing waits for it. The capital that would have gone into steel goes into the print, the finish, or the margin.
- The deck gets a format nobody else has. A 114 × 73 mm card sits in the hand differently from the format every other deck uses, and a house format is a quiet piece of brand equity.
- The dimension risk disappears entirely. The classic failure in card packaging is the two-supplier gap: the printer cut to one tolerance, the tin was made to another, and nobody owned the millimetre between them. When one company specifies both, there is no interface left to fall through.
Cards and tin from one supplier
Behind the sizing question sits a second one: who prints the cards. Many publishers already have a card printer they trust, and nothing here asks them to change. The cutting size, corner radius, bleed and safe area are published for every format, and a printer can work from them the same day.
Where a buyer would rather not run two contracts to make one product, we supply the deck as well as the tin. That is one specification, one quotation covering cards and tin, one purchase order and one delivery: a finished deck in a finished pack, instead of two consignments to be married up in a warehouse. Ask for the tin, the cards, or both, and the quotation comes back the same way.
What the dieline actually says
Every format we offer for cards is published with the same short specification: all a card printer needs, and the figures we work to when the cards come from us.
- Card cutting size in millimetres. The rule is simple: the card is the tin outer dimension minus 6 mm, the clearance a deck needs to be lifted out cleanly rather than prised.
- Corner radius 3.5 mm. Standard for card dies, comfortable in the hand, forgiving of shuffling wear.
- Bleed 2 mm on every edge, so no white line appears if the cut drifts.
- Safe area 4 mm from trim. Keep numerals, suit marks, borders and text inside it.
- Capacity calculated at 0.32 mm per card against the internal depth.
That last figure carries a qualifier, and we would rather state it plainly. Capacity is approximate, and confirmed against your material before anything is committed. Card material runs between roughly 0.28 mm and 0.33 mm depending on core, coating and lamination, and the difference across a full deck is enough to matter. Send a sample card and we will give you a real number. Preparing the tin artwork itself is a separate discipline, covered in preparing artwork for custom tins.
Choosing from the fifteen formats
Fifteen bodies run on tooling we already own: round, rectangular, square and mini. Rather than list them all, here is how the choice is made.
If you want tarot proportion
The 120 × 79 × 35 mm rectangular body gives a 114 × 73 mm card, tarot proportion on tooling that exists today, holding roughly 100 cards. It is simply not the number on a standard die list, which is why the deck looks like yours.
If you want a compact playing deck
The 100 × 75 × 35 mm body gives a 94 × 69 mm card and takes about 100 of them: a familiar playing-card feel, slightly broader, in a tin small enough to be an impulse item. Where the deck is thicker, the same footprint at 45 mm deep holds around 130.
If you want something the shelf has not seen
The round bodies take round cards, a small but genuine niche in oracle and party decks, and double as token, chip and component tins. The largest, at 133 mm diameter and 40 mm deep, is the most versatile in the range: it takes round cards up to 127 mm, and it also holds a conventional rectangular deck lying flat with space around it, since a 94 × 69 mm card has a diagonal of 117 mm. That makes it a deck-plus-tokens tin.
If you are packing a whole small game
The 170 × 105 × 40 mm and 190 × 115 × 40 mm bodies are sized for a complete product: deck, tokens, rules leaflet, in one metal box that survives a shelf and a suitcase. Tinplate is opaque and rigid, protecting against light, crushing and humidity far better than a carton tuck box. The full set, with cutting sizes and capacities, is at card tins.
Lids, and why deep-drawn matters
The fitted lid is the standard for card tins and the one we recommend unless there is a reason not to: quiet, reseating squarely, surviving hundreds of openings. A hinged lid is available on the rectangular and square bodies, which suits a deck that lives on a table during play. Domed lids, inner-plug lids, screw closures on round bodies and window lids in a single piece of clear acrylic with no metal frame are all possible; the trade-offs are in tin lid types compared.
Five of the fifteen bodies are deep-drawn, a real quality difference rather than a specification-sheet flourish. A deep-drawn body is formed from a single disc of tinplate, so it has no side seam at all. The consequence is visible and tactile: no seam line interrupting the print, and a cleaner edge under the thumb. It is not easy to imitate. Interiors are smooth and non-abrasive so card edges are not scuffed, and food-safe lacquer is available.
Quantities and timing, stated honestly
Our minimum order is 5,000 to 25,000 pieces per design and size, depending on the body and the finish. That is a real manufacturing threshold, not a negotiating posture, and the reasoning is set out in custom tin MOQ explained. Under 5,000? Tell us your volume and we will tell you plainly what is possible.
On timing, the promise is four to six weeks from approved artwork to finished tins, because there is no tooling step in front of it. The cards run in parallel with the tins from the cutting size we give on day one, whether they come from us with the tin or from a printer of your own, so the two halves converge instead of queueing. The mould stays with us in Istanbul; the shape is not exclusive, but the artwork is entirely yours.
We are a litho-printed tinplate manufacturer founded in 1979, certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 22000, with design, tooling, offset printing and forming of the tinplate under one roof. Steel is also the most recycled packaging material in Europe: 84% of steel packaging placed on the EU market was recycled in 2024. More on the plant is on capabilities.
Start from the tin
Pick the body, take the cutting size, and tell us whether the cards should come with it. Browse the fifteen formats at card tins, and when you have a shortlist, send us the deck count, the card material you have in mind and your target quantity through the request a quotation form. We will confirm the real capacity against your material and return a dieline the same week. A free sample of an existing tin is available so you can judge it in your hand; you cover the courier.
Custom tin packaging
Related sectors
Matching tins
Have a tin in mind?
Tell us your shape, size and artwork. We send a quote and a free sample, and reply within hours.
Request a quote
