Decks You Wish You Hadn't Bought?

Morwenna

Don't feel bad about that. We are all drawn to or feel a dislike towards a specific deck for a multitude of reasons. No right or wrong in that. For example, I bought the Centennial Rider Waite because of all the good reviews and I just don't like it. The muted coloring is TOO muted for me and the whole deck has a very dark, dank feel to it. Some people love that in comparison to the boldness of the regular Rider Waite.

Now, see, I rather like the centennial RWS, which I just got recently. I don't love it to bits like the long-OOP University Books version, but... :)

Yes, we are all different.
 

delinfrey

Dame Darcy's for me... loved the artwork, waited on my wishlist, very disappointed with the quality. Reprint with crisp lines? Count me in!
 

Shanachie05

Lantana, that deck is at the top of my give- away- to- a -friend pile for exactly the same reasons... :/

Give away pile? *snickers*.
Yeah.
I just pulled out all of those decks I have collected over the years, and I have good sized giveaway pile. I have been going through them, and they just don't hold my attention like my Hanson-Roberts deck does.

I tried to bond with the Art Nouveau today and I think that will join the Thoth deck tomorrow!
 

barefootlife

For me it's the Linestrider. It's not that the art is bad (I really like it), or that the deck reads poorly, it's that the cardstock is so unsatisfying compared to other decks I have.

I also don't like Zirkus Magi as much as I thought I would, but I haven't really tried reading with it yet.
 

Galadhwen

I'll just chime in and say Shadowscapes. Aside from the border, the amount of detail in one card confuses me. There's just so many to the point it's TMI for me!

Tarot Mucha is also a heartbreak for me because I just can't connect with it despite the pretty imagery. Another popular deck I can't connect at all would be the Revelations Tarot. From afar, the stained glass pictures looked really cool but then I testdrove it aaaand nope. :(

For me it's the Linestrider. It's not that the art is bad (I really like it), or that the deck reads poorly, it's that the cardstock is so unsatisfying compared to other decks I have.
...would you be interested to give it away? 🙈
 

barefootlife

I'll just chime in and say Shadowscapes. Aside from the border, the amount of detail in one card confuses me. There's just so many to the point it's TMI for me!

Tarot Mucha is also a heartbreak for me because I just can't connect with it despite the pretty imagery. Another popular deck I can't connect at all would be the Revelations Tarot. From afar, the stained glass pictures looked really cool but then I testdrove it aaaand nope. :(


...would you be interested to give it away? 🙈

Trade it, possibly, but I keep hoping I'll get over myself and my cardstock snobbery.
 

Honeysun

Celtic Tarot by Julian de Burgh.

The deck itself is alright, I didn't really go through all the cards. I bought it from a shop in Dublin and the quality was really bad - when I opened the box, the cards were all over the place, obviously been handled before because they weren't in order and their edges were black. They felt really dirty in my hands. So now they're laying in a wooden box, used only twice. Couldn't connect with them at all.
 

Etene

Also I was reading that there was a mistake with the Strength card and they put green around the lion's mane and it shouldn't have been there.
The mistake on Strength is that it has an "VIII" where "XI" belongs. :D The coloring is correct, because the garland around the woman's robe is entangling the lion, weaving through his mane. This is more clear in a black and white image, as the mane is drawn with large curls, but beneath the ear and near the lion's front you can see the finer leaf pattern appear.

I really want to connect with them better and then maybe I'll feel differently.
I haven't purchased many decks, but my sorta-regret is Dame Fortune's Wheel, with a huge caveat. I like Huson's interpretations, which refer back to pre-Waite sources, and I appreciate the artwork's effort to fit both those interpretations and the look of surviving samples of centuries-old cards, but I can't remember this particular deck ever giving me a useful answer. (Exception being the deck interview spread, which seemed to say that I'd have a hard time reading with it. At least it warned me.) I'd try it once in a while and usually feel afterward like I had wasted my time (and question) on it, especially compared to my Centennial which seems to hit the mark with reliable frequency.
 

bonebeach

I've probably posted in this thread already, but: The Vintage Horror Tarot. Nice idea, TERRIBLE execution. It just feels lazy. The images on several cards are super pixelated. The whole thing just feels so low quality, and like I could have made it myself just cutting and pasting bad google image search results into MS paint. And it was expensive! $70 or $80 USD, if I recall? Absolutely the worst buyer's remorse I've had over a deck, and maybe for anything in general.

I reached out to the artist to gently ask if the deck was meant to look like it did, or if my copy was just a dud, and she replied that, yes, the deck was supposed to look like that because the images were low quality--so she really did just cut and paste.

I try to not talk trash about indie decks, because I really respect the amount of work that goes into ANY deck, but...this one just felt like a rip off.
 

zeldajones91

I have only owned about 15 decks in my lifetime and I got rid of about half of them. Guess I'm a little picky when it comes to my decks. :p

~Aquarian Tarot - this deck was just ugly.
~Tarot Illuminati - again, too ugly and too CGI. I couldn't bring myself to look at the deck more than once.
~The Night Sun Tarot - same issue as above.
~Druidcraft Tarot - I didn't outright hate this one, but it didn't read well for me so I passed it on to my sister.
~Anna K - I still have this one, but I really dislike the ugly "mustached" men and women. It wasn't worth the price.
~Wild Unknown - WHAT? Yep, I really regret purchasing the Wild Unknown. I got the 1st edition and I bought it at full price from Etsy. If I had purchased the current mass-market deck, it might have been worth the price. The art is beautiful, but the cards are so bare. I LOVE seeking out hidden symbols in tarot, and there's nothing there to find...

There was one deck that I regret giving away, and that's the large print Thoth deck. I really loved the artwork, but I was trying to downsize my collection at the time as a part of my minimalist lifestyle. I had this idea in my head that I shouldn't keep a tarot deck that I don't read with. Ugh... such a bad decision. There are so many times that I've wanted to study the Thoth deck since.