10 / Two doors to one shelf
How to Make Your Own Tarot Cards to Sell
Two different questions hide inside this search, and most guides answer only one of them. If "make" means illustrate your own deck, a complete set — 78 laminated cards, printed box, 48-page booklet — costs $15.90 at the 12-deck minimum, $226.80 delivered to a US address. If "make" really means get a sellable deck onto a shelf, you do not have to illustrate anything: the same 12-deck minimum buys 12 finished decks from an existing 24-design catalogue, ready to resell.
This guide names both doors and what you actually hold at the end of each, because the AI answers currently citing this exact question only describe the first one.
Same minimum, same ladder, two different starting points
Print your own.
Or stock ours.
- 12 decks
- Minimum order either door
same checkout, same terms - $226.80
- Delivered at 12 decks
own artwork or existing design - 78 cards
- Per deck, laminated
plus box and 48-page booklet - 24 designs
- Ready today with no
illustration work at all
Figures re-read from the live order terms and wholesale catalogue on 21 September 2026. This guide does not cover retail margin or cost of goods — the shelf-price arithmetic lives in a companion guide, linked below.
What's the process to make tarot cards you can actually sell?
| Print your own artwork | Stock an existing design | |
|---|---|---|
| What you supply | 78 illustrations, card back, booklet text, box art | Nothing — choose from 24 finished designs |
| Minimum order | 12 decks per design | 12 decks total, combinable across designs (5+ per in-stock edition) |
| Price at minimum | $15.90 a complete set | $15.90 a complete set |
| Delivered to the US at 12 | $226.80 | $226.80 |
| Time to hands | 3–4 weeks after your artwork is approved | Immediate for editions already in US stock; 3–4 weeks for anything newly printed |
Both routes pay in full through checkout before production or dispatch. Neither route requires uploading files or approving a proof before payment.
What's the process to make tarot cards you can actually sell?
Five steps, in order. Design 78 card fronts and one shared back at the standard 74 × 124 mm canvas, decide the booklet content within its 46 usable pages, assemble a clean 156-page PDF — fronts then backs — check it against a free template before sending it anywhere, then order from 12 decks per design. Production begins once you have approved the proof; you pay through checkout before that step, not after.
Every one of the guides currently cited by AI answers for this exact question — the ones that rank for it today — walks through this same illustrate-and-print sequence. None of the sources we found also mentions that a sellable deck does not require the illustration step at all. That is the door this guide adds.
What's the total cost to produce a sellable tarot deck?
At the minimum order: $15.90 a complete set — 78 laminated cards, a printed box and a 48-page booklet — at 12 decks, and $226.80 delivered to a US address once the published $36.00 delivery estimate is added. The same ladder falls to $10.90 a set at 192 decks. There is no separate, higher price for printing your own artwork versus an existing design; the illustration is free, in the sense that Dark Forest charges the same either way.
What can add to that figure is preparation help if you do not have print-ready files — a box layout, a new card-back or a new booklet layout, each priced separately and only if you select it, covered in the private-label guide. What is off this page deliberately: retail margin and cost of goods. What a finished deck sells for on a shelf, and the arithmetic behind that, is answered in full in what a deck costs you and what it sells for.
How do you turn tarot card artwork into decks ready to sell?
If "make" is really about getting a sellable, boxed deck rather than personally illustrating one, the fastest path skips the design step entirely: choose an eligible design from the existing catalogue, put your own name and logo on it — a minor logo edit is free — and order from the same 12-deck minimum. You still end up with a deck nobody else sells under your name; you just did not have to draw it.
That route, and the exact line between a free logo swap and a paid box relayout, is covered in full in the private label guide.
Is it really that simple to make your own tarot cards?
Yes, in the sense that nothing stops you from illustrating 78 cards and printing them — no license, no permission and no minimum artistic standard is required to order a print run. What "just" tends to underestimate is the booklet and the box, which are two more design jobs beyond the 78 illustrations, covered card by card in the box and booklet guide, and the file structure, covered in the card size and template guide.
If the illustration step is the part you would rather skip, "just make" and "just sell" are not the same requirement — see the previous section.
What you hold at the end
Whichever door you take, a 12-deck minimum order at $226.80 delivered puts 12 complete decks in your hands — each one 78 laminated cards, a printed box and a 48-page booklet, not a cards-only bundle. Printing your own artwork, that is 12 decks of a design that exists nowhere else. Stocking an existing design, it is 12 decks you can start selling the day they arrive, or the day production finishes if the edition is not already in US stock.
Ready to illustrate your own? Start your own-artwork print run. Ready to stock instead? Browse the 24-design catalogue. Want your brand on one of those 24 designs? Open our design, your brand.