Tips for choosing your first Tarot deck.

Everyone who practices cartomancy has their own favorite pack of cards and style of use. There are literally thousands of different styled decks on the market. A collector could go into serious debit because the price ranges into pretty high numbers. Because of the staggering array of what you could choose from, I'm narrowing my focus to tarot cards. Again, there is an astonishing variety, but we can narrow your options down into a more realistic set with a few steps.

The average price of a tarot deck is between $15 and $30 dollars. Sometimes, you may get lucky and find them at second hand stores for a $1.50. If cost is not an option, you can buy from pretty much any place you can find them with out much worry about funding your purchase. If you're like me, you need to spend within your budget. There are some really amazing decks out there with fantastic artwork that are not going to clean out your bank account. Shopping around by price, you can still find some great stuff.

That said, choosing your deck based on artwork is a valid way to do it. If the artwork looks amazing to you and gives you all kinds of wonderful feels, and it is in your budget, snap that puppy up. If the artwork looks stunning but it is confusing, you have two options. One is to buy the really cool looking deck because it is really cool. This will lead you down the road of collecting cards, just to warn you. The other option is the buy the deck and try to work with it for a few months. It may be that the deck will get easier to handle as you get more experience with it.

(If anyone can help me learn the identity of this deck that I found a picture of on a free stock photography site years ago, I will owe you a big favor! I want to acquire it but have no idea where to start.)

If you're not so sure about choosing a deck based on artwork, start with the simplest and least expensive deck you can find. It will usually be some variation of the Rider-Waite deck. This is the basis of  most popular tarot decks. In fact, if you can find a reprint of the Rider-Waite deck, it is an excellent deck to start with. The trick is to find one that comes with a good booklet on the standard meanings. While you could go out and buy a book on tarot reading, the booklets and some practice can get just about anyone started on doing tarot readings as a hobby.