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Playing Card Chat ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦ => A Cellar of Fine Vintages => Topic started by: Chuqii on May 31, 2017, 10:28:58 AM
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Anyone know, more or less, when the Rider Backs switched to craggy hills from smooth hills in the background? The earliest image I can find with the craggy hills is from the 1915-1916 USPC Official Rules of Cards Games book, but I wondered if someone else has actual cards that can narrow it down. In fact, seeing the images of the earliest Rider Backs on Joseph Pierson's site, I was wondering how well one can date a deck of Rider Backs just from the backs and what one would have to look for. If you have any suggestions, post below.
Anyway, below are the 1915-16 image and the version from the 1911 edition of the same book. If you have images of the cards from this time frame, please post.
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Best I can do from my collection is c1900 Rider Back still with smooth hills, but next I have is 1943. Can anyone pinpoint where change happened? Could help with dating decks that have the RM Fact aces of spades.
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Change almost certainly in 1891 with a possibility as late as 1895. All early decks through 1890 have the smooth hills and taller grass. We have not seen a Rider deck with the U.S. Printing Company Ace which ran from 1891 - 1894. In 1895 through today, the Ace reads U. S. Playing Card Company.
Steve
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I should have looked at Chuqli's post and photo before responding. It does look like his 1900 Rider deck does indeed have the smooth hills and taller grass. But what is does not have is the longer side on one of the sides of the "paper clip" coming out from the center. So it appears that that error was corrected in the 1890s, but the smooth hills were retained. Because the Rider back is so common, I did not collect any decks unless they were the oldest vintages, 1887 - 1890. I will try to do more homework re the timing of the hills change.
Steve
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It doesn't surprise me that there are little tweaks that have occurred over time. I've noticed similar tweaks in other USPC deck backs and I know that they do review the files used to create the plates from time to time.
One such change I spotted is on the "Original Circle Back" of the Tally Ho deck. In the "flower" near the top and bottom edge along the center line, one of the two flowers was at some point modified - it looks nearly identical, but is in fact different enough to create a one-way design. I've noticed older decks from the 1970s have identical flowers, but modern decks don't.
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There is a few topic similar to this one on TheMagicCafe - about the one-way back design of Rider Back that was according to some replied in those, then the last change of Rider Back designed is 1960s-1970s (no more 1way on it).
May that become a milestones in this topic?