Pricing
What a metal business card actually costs
Published prices range from under a euro to over four hundred. Here is what drives the spread, and what you are really paying for at each end.
· 6 min
Search for metal business cards and you will find the same product quoted at €0.30 and at €400. Both numbers are real. They describe entirely different things, and the difference is not margin — it is quantity, finishing, and who does the work.
The published numbers
These are list prices from public pages, not quotes we obtained. They are useful as a map of the market rather than as a guide to what you will pay.
| Source | Configuration | Per card |
|---|---|---|
| Alibaba, bulk | Laser-cut stainless, MOQ 50 | $0.30 – 1.80 |
| Metal Kards | 0.5 mm stainless, matte, 1,000 pcs | $1.85 |
| Metal Kards | same, 100 pcs | $2.70 |
| Print Peppermint | Silver, matte, engraved, 100 pcs | $4.75 |
| Print Peppermint | Black steel, brushed, cutouts, 100 pcs | $6.20 |
| German engraving shops | MOQ 100 – 300 | €8 – 15 |
| Print Peppermint | 5 pcs | $46.00 |
| V1CE | Metal NFC card, single | $145 |
| V1CE | 24K gold | $450 |
Why the spread is so wide
Four things move the number, and only one of them is the metal itself.
- Quantity. Setting up a laser for a run costs the same whether you cut one card or five hundred. At 1,000 pieces that setup disappears into the price; at five pieces it is the price.
- Thickness. Most cheap cards are 0.3 to 0.5 mm. They bend. At 0.8 mm a card holds its shape in a wallet, and the material cost roughly doubles.
- Finishing. Deburring, bead-blasting, coating and inspection are hand operations that scale badly. A card that has been through all four costs several times a card that has been through none.
- Who carries the risk of a reject. A quoted price that does not mention what happens to mis-engraved pieces is a price that assumes you will accept them.
At five pieces you are not buying metal. You are buying somebody's setup time.
The single-card problem
Almost every manufacturer has a minimum order of 50 to 100 pieces. That works for a company ordering one design for a sales team. It does not work for one person who wants one card with their own name on it — which is why the single-card end of the market is either very expensive or does not exist.
There are two ways around it. Most sellers collect orders for a week and send them to a contract manufacturer as one job, which gets the price down at the cost of two to four weeks of waiting. The other way is to own the laser. We took that one: blanks come in by the box, and a single card is set up and marked the same day its proof is approved. No minimum, no queue behind somebody else's run.
What you should ask for
- The thickness in millimetres, not adjectives. 0.8 mm is a card; 0.3 mm is a shim.
- Whether the edges are deburred, and whether they are chamfered.
- Whether the price includes engraving or only the blank.
- What happens if a piece comes out wrong — remake at whose cost?
- For coated cards: PVD or paint. PVD bonds; paint chips.