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Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker

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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #150 on: January 24, 2016, 06:13:32 AM »
 

plainbacks

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Hi I just acquired what I think is a very nice deck - for the US Army and clearly issued during wartime as there is a paper slip advertising war bonds.  Pack is high quality with gold edging.  Made by USPC Co. with a congress card (but not 'Congress' on the AS).  The file scan shows the main details.

Does anyone have any info (?date) for example were these sent out to troops?

Thanks in advance
Paul

 

Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #151 on: January 25, 2016, 03:16:13 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Hi I just acquired what I think is a very nice deck - for the US Army and clearly issued during wartime as there is a paper slip advertising war bonds.  Pack is high quality with gold edging.  Made by USPC Co. with a congress card (but not 'Congress' on the AS).  The file scan shows the main details.

Does anyone have any info (?date) for example were these sent out to troops?

Thanks in advance
Paul

The design is consistent with the 1940s and the war bonds ad card would certainly indicate a WW2-era deck.  "E" in the Ace of Spades code would narrow that down to having been manufactured in 1943, right in the thick of the war.  USPC was very busy at the time - manufacturing regular decks, spotter decks with ships and aircraft pictures, parachutes for the war effort and their "escape decks," designed for shipment in Red Cross packages to POWs in Europe - as you likely know, when the cards were moistened, the glue would dissolve and the two paper layers would reveal a segment of an escape map hidden inside.  Lots of interesting secret shipments of escape-related supplies went out like this - I remember reading a story about a POW accidentally breaking a phonograph record from a Red Cross shipment to find that European paper currency had been hidden in the core of the acetate!

Obviously I can't say this with certainty, but it's very likely that this particular deck was never sent out to the troops.  Decks sold to US servicemen during World War II were issued special stamps indicating that they were tax-free, whereas this deck has an IRS revenue stamp (a.k.a. tax stamp) with a USPC cancellation.  It was probably sold domestically to civilians looking for a patriotic-looking pack of cards or perhaps manufactured for the US Army and intended for sale to civilians.

As I understand it, most of the intellectual property associated with the US Federal Government is in the public domain as regarding objects, places, things, etc. made with American tax dollars.  For example, while specific government documents might be restricted, government-related intellectual property such as the White House, the American Flag, NASA, the US Constitution, the FBI, the Presidential Seal of Office, Air Force One, the Space Shuttle, Marine One, the statue depicting the flag planting at Iwo Jima, the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, etc. would be considered public domain - as long as I didn't use them to imply any sort of official recognition or endorsement without permission or use them for committing some kind of fraud (such as suggesting the government gave me permission to use the "US Army" deck to raise money for war bonds), I could use photos or other images of these things and place them on objects I want to sell.  My point is that any civilian could have ordered such a deck to be made for retail sale; they may or may not be something officially ordered for manufacture by the US Army or any branch of the government.  I would also not be able to use images of specific individuals without permission - meaning faces of government employees, present and past, would be off-limits for reproduction and sale for privacy reasons unless taken in the context of news reporting or for personal use.  For example, I can take a souvenir photo of the President having a cup of coffee at the local coffeehouse, I can sell the photo to a news service for use in their reporting on an event involving the President (such as the coffee house visit, some other thing he's in the news for, a biographical piece, etc.), but I can't make a T-shirt or a coffee mug with that image and go selling it - though if I made a small quantity for myself and my immediate family to use personally, perhaps even give away without charge a small number to friends and other people that I know, that would be permissible.
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #152 on: January 27, 2016, 01:30:09 PM »
 

LarryLevan

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I bought some old "as nas" playing cards in Iran in 2011. I would like to know how old they are and if they are worth anything. I have five identical cards, so the deck contains ten cards.

Thanks in advance.

Thomas
« Last Edit: January 27, 2016, 03:34:03 PM by LarryLevan »
 

Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #153 on: January 29, 2016, 08:59:40 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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I bought some old "as nas" playing cards in Iran in 2011. I would like to know how old they are and if they are worth anything. I have five identical cards, so the deck contains ten cards.

Thanks in advance.

Thomas

My knowledge of cards from outside the US is very limited.  My knowledge of cards from Iran is practically non-existent, beyond, "I know they have cards."

Do the cards have any useful markings on them, in English or in Persian?  Good, LARGE close-up photos would also help anyone with adequate knowledge.

The best I could tell you is that the cards are likely not more than 100-150 years old, and that's just a guess based on the clothing seen in the cards you showed in the pictures.  They're very Western-looking, and even in the West weren't widespread until the mid-19th century or thereabouts.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 09:01:33 AM by Don Boyer »
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #154 on: January 31, 2016, 12:03:51 PM »
 

LarryLevan

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Thanks for the reply. Here's two more pictures.
 

Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #155 on: February 02, 2016, 09:03:08 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Thanks for the reply. Here's two more pictures.

It looks like it was stuck to a surface with tape at some point and the tape is still there.

You can submit MUCH higher resolution photos.  These are still rather small - about 0.07 Mb, or 7% of the maximum file size you can upload.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2016, 09:03:41 AM by Don Boyer »
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #156 on: March 01, 2016, 04:32:30 PM »
 

Chuqii

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So I'm looking through some old Aviator decks, probably late 1940s, and I was struck by how the court cards and the pips in one pinochle deck were different from all the Aviator poker decks.  Regular Aviator back.  I don't remember seeing these on Aviators before.  Anyone have any info on these courts and pips?

(Turns out these are Type C from Rod Starling's excellent article - Andrew Dougherty style courts).  I checked some of my other regular Aviator decks and they were Type B (late 1940s) or Type F (early 1950s).
« Last Edit: April 21, 2016, 02:47:42 PM by Chuqii »
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #157 on: March 02, 2016, 06:00:58 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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So I'm looking through some old Aviator decks, probably late 1940s, and I was struck by how the court cards and the pips in one pinochle deck were different from all the Aviator poker decks.  Regular Aviator back.  I don't remember seeing these on Aviators before.  Anyone have any info on these courts and pips?

I remember perhaps two or three years ago there was an AWESOME article in Clear the Decks that covered the topic of USPC standard faces and how they evolved over the years.  If you don't have that issue, you should look for it in the Ask Alexander archives.  It may have the answers you're looking for.
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #158 on: March 02, 2016, 08:47:05 AM »
 

Chuqii

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I will check that out. Thanks, Don.

Not having much luck finding the proper issue.  Anyone remember which issue it was?
« Last Edit: March 02, 2016, 02:25:06 PM by Chuqii »
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #159 on: March 04, 2016, 12:57:08 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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I will check that out. Thanks, Don.

Not having much luck finding the proper issue.  Anyone remember which issue it was?

"A Royal Maze," by Rod Starling, Volume 27, Issue 2 (June 2013), pages 18-20.
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #160 on: April 14, 2016, 04:31:31 PM »
 

Chuqii

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Finally returned to Ask Alexander to look up this issue, and they don't have it!  Goes from Vol 27 No1 to Vol 27 no3.  Oh well
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #161 on: April 14, 2016, 05:32:40 PM »
 

Don Boyer

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Finally returned to Ask Alexander to look up this issue, and they don't have it!  Goes from Vol 27 No1 to Vol 27 no3.  Oh well

Don't despair...  :))  I'm going to post it in the Club Chat board of the Members section of the forum.

http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=9391.0
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What Deck Brand is This?
« Reply #162 on: April 22, 2016, 01:16:40 AM »
 

Wild Joker

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Hi there, forgive me for being a n00b (in more ways than one), I'm unsure of where this thread should go, but this seemed like the most logical board - if it needs to be moved, please do so.

Anyway, I'm a really big M*A*S*Her, and as such, I know that cards played a big factor for the medical staff, whether it was poker, gin rummy, or even a game of bridge. I also know that they usually played with Bikes and Bees (and even Hoyle on one occasion) . . . however, there's a particular deck of cards that made rounds in at least two Season Six episodes ("The Merchant of Korea," where Charles is lassoed into a midnight poker game, and "Your Hit Parade," where Hawkeye invents the game Double Cranko by combining checkers, chess, and poker) that I have absolutely no idea of what brand they're supposed to be, and was wondering if anybody here could figure it out:


That's about the best screencap I can get. They actually look very, very similar to a cheap, off-brand deck I bought at Dollar General several years back. I considered the possibility that they may be Aviator, but I believe Aviator's back design has a more consentent coloring
 

Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #163 on: April 22, 2016, 12:15:20 PM »
 

Chuqii

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Turns out the court cards above are the Type C from Rod Starling's excellent article - Andrew Dougherty style courts.  I checked some of my regular Aviator decks, and they were Type B (late 1940s) or Type F (early 1950s).

Ken Lodge has an article online that covers some of the same territory as Rod Starling's article and adds some information for other US card companies

http://www.wopc.co.uk/blogs/kenlodge/united-states-playing-card-co
« Last Edit: April 22, 2016, 04:02:49 PM by Chuqii »
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Re: What Deck Brand is This?
« Reply #164 on: April 22, 2016, 12:27:19 PM »
 

ecNate

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No idea  ;)  I tried some image and general searching just for fun and came across either your posting or where you got the question from.  It's interesting enough to share here as well.
http://www.mash4077tv.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=878

As for getting your question answered you came to the right place, but perhaps the mods will move your post here instead http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=6081.0

My guess is your hunch is correct that's it's just some off brand and the world will never know, but we'll see...
 

Re: What Deck Brand is This?
« Reply #165 on: April 22, 2016, 03:08:27 PM »
 

Wild Joker

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Heh, well thanks for sharing; even though I later mentioned it in the other thread, I would just like to restate, for the record, that I do, indeed, know how to play gin rummy - I didn't at the time, but I do now . . . though, admittedly, I still get a little mixed up about what beats what in poker (I understand Bicycle decks usually come with a card with that information on it, but none of the decks I've bought ever did).

And thanks, as I said, I'm a n00b, and wasn't entirely sure where to post this, so to be on the safe side, I posted it here since this board appears to be for general card discussion.

I think I should mention, upon a closer look at this mystery deck, it would appear that the cards are actually narrow, rather than standard poker sized - I'm not sure if that could be a clue to their identity, or not, but I figured I'd throw it out there.
 

Re: What Deck Brand is This?
« Reply #166 on: April 22, 2016, 03:34:14 PM »
 

ecNate

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It's hard to make out any details in the screenshot, but considering there is low lighting, poor resolution/focus, etc it's possible these are the ones.  Certainly a generic non-brand, but a style that would have been popular in the 70s/80s.  https://www.etsy.com/listing/206360318/vintage-1970s-playing-cards-white-and

It feels like the white is too prominent on these cards compared to the screenshot, but hard to say given the angle and lighting.  Certainly similar anyhow.  It does appear the cards in the screenshot could be a 6 pointed start with elements between the points, much like this deck.

 

Re: What Deck Brand is This?
« Reply #167 on: April 22, 2016, 04:21:36 PM »
 

Wild Joker

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Yes, I apologize for that, as I said, it was really the best screencap I could get in terms of actually seeing a majority of the back design (without their hands covering half the cards).

But looking at that example and comparing it with the screencap best I can, I think we could definitely rule this as a possibility - the designs do seem to come awfully close to looking alike. As you mentioned, I do believe the center of the back design was/is a six-point star with elements inbetween the points. Like I said, I'm definitely ruling this as a strong possibility.
 

Re: What Deck Brand is This?
« Reply #168 on: April 23, 2016, 02:11:02 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Yes, I apologize for that, as I said, it was really the best screencap I could get in terms of actually seeing a majority of the back design (without their hands covering half the cards).

But looking at that example and comparing it with the screencap best I can, I think we could definitely rule this as a possibility - the designs do seem to come awfully close to looking alike. As you mentioned, I do believe the center of the back design was/is a six-point star with elements inbetween the points. Like I said, I'm definitely ruling this as a strong possibility.

I would say the opposite, that the card you found on Etsy is NOT a match to the card used in the show.  Note that the Etsy card has a six-pointed star that's DIFFERENT at each point, making it a one-way design.  While it's difficult to make out any clear details on the M*A*S*H screen capture, one detail that is clear is that the six-pointed star on that card appears to be symmetrical with each half being mirrored, looked at when bisected horizontally.

It really just looks like a cheap, generic pack of playing cards commonly produced by manufacturers throughout China and India.  While 99-cent stores like Dollar General weren't terribly popular at the time the show aired (I'm not even sure they were in business yet), decks like these did manage to find their way into mom-and-pop drugstores and novelty shops around the time that Season Six of the show was being filmed.  The season aired in 1977/1978, so it was likely shot from the spring of '77 into that winter - in terms of story chronology, Frank Burns was committed to a psychiatric hospital at the end of the prior season and is replaced at the start of this season by Charles Emerson Winchester III, while Margaret Houlihan begins the season having returned from her honeymoon with husband Donald Penobscot.
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #169 on: April 23, 2016, 01:28:30 PM »
 

Wild Joker

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Like I said, I was considering it a possibility, not necessarily an exact match -- again, it may not be possible to find an exact match, but I have been curious in trying to solve the mystery, though it may not be solveable, lol.

In doing some further looking myself, I did happen to come across what may be another possibility:


According to the source I got this from, these are Royal brand decks . . . however, further Googling the Royal brand turns up multiple different back designs that are similar to one another, but all differ significantly in their center designs: one of which is a stylized spades, and another has little cards fanned out into the shape of a star.
 

Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #170 on: April 24, 2016, 03:42:32 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Like I said, I was considering it a possibility, not necessarily an exact match -- again, it may not be possible to find an exact match, but I have been curious in trying to solve the mystery, though it may not be solveable, lol.

In doing some further looking myself, I did happen to come across what may be another possibility:


According to the source I got this from, these are Royal brand decks . . . however, further Googling the Royal brand turns up multiple different back designs that are similar to one another, but all differ significantly in their center designs: one of which is a stylized spades, and another has little cards fanned out into the shape of a star.

It's not likely solvable.  There's just too many cheap, generic backs with a similar design out there, and odds are the studio props department bought up a bunch of them cheap from some wholesaler - if any records were kept, they wouldn't likely have manufacturer and model details beyond something to the effect of "cards, red, 10 gross."  It's not simply like looking for a needle in a haystack, but more like looking for a specific brand of needle made by a specific company in a stack of different, nearly identical needles of different brands from different companies...  There will be countless near-matches, enough to drive a person insane trying to find the one true match, especially when comparing against a relatively low-resolution screen capture.  Still images taken on set with analog film would actually be a better bet, but such images are uncommon enough, never mind finding one with a clear-enough look at the back of that deck of cards.  (And this further assumes that only one deck was in use, or at the least one design of deck in multiple copies, and not a handful of similar-enough but non-identical decks from shot to shot and take to take...)

A deeper Google search of the Royal brand reveals that the company that makes them, Taizhou Baicaoyuan Cultural & Sports Manufacturing Co., Ltd. of Taizhou City, Jiangsu, PRC, has only been in business since 1996, making it impossible for Royal playing cards to be the ones used on set.  In addition, they only manufacture plastic playing cards, which were not in common use at the time and probably not in use on the set of the TV show.
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #171 on: April 24, 2016, 05:08:09 PM »
 

Wild Joker

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Yeah, you're probably right; it was certainly a long shot, but I wanted to give it a try anyway.

Slightly off topic, but incidentally, I happened to be in Dollar General today, so I checked out their cards, and they just happened to have that particular off-brand I mentioned in my initial post (since I bought that deck years ago, DG seemed to only carry those Ace Authentic decks) . . . they're so off-brand that they don't even have a brand on the box at all, they're just simply called "Classic Playing Cards" on the front, while the back simply gives you partial views of both the front and back designs.
 

Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #172 on: April 24, 2016, 11:16:18 PM »
 

andrew daugherty

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Look closer. Those Classic playing cards are Cartamundi decks, made in China.  DG has contracted with Cartamundi to produce the Classics a couple of times over the years. The Classics appear to be replacing Mavericks as the dollar deck this year. 

The Classics are very similar, if not the same, as the Rite Aid store brand deck that sells for well more than a dollar in my area. 

The center "button" on the back design has changed slightly on various editions of this desk. Sorry, my decks aren't readily accessible for pictures right now. 

--Andrew

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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #173 on: April 25, 2016, 02:46:00 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Yeah, you're probably right; it was certainly a long shot, but I wanted to give it a try anyway.

Slightly off topic, but incidentally, I happened to be in Dollar General today, so I checked out their cards, and they just happened to have that particular off-brand I mentioned in my initial post (since I bought that deck years ago, DG seemed to only carry those Ace Authentic decks) . . . they're so off-brand that they don't even have a brand on the box at all, they're just simply called "Classic Playing Cards" on the front, while the back simply gives you partial views of both the front and back designs.
Look closer. Those Classic playing cards are Cartamundi decks, made in China.  DG has contracted with Cartamundi to produce the Classics a couple of times over the years. The Classics appear to be replacing Mavericks as the dollar deck this year. 

The Classics are very similar, if not the same, as the Rite Aid store brand deck that sells for well more than a dollar in my area. 

The center "button" on the back design has changed slightly on various editions of this desk. Sorry, my decks aren't readily accessible for pictures right now. 

--Andrew

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Jeffersonville, Ind. 

Classic is a Cartamundi brand, and one of their cheaper models to boot.  In fact, it's rare that I ever find a Cartamundi deck worth playing with - they're mostly varying degrees of bad with rare exception.  Cartamundi has the contract for Rite Aid's store-branded decks - I purchased some to check out the face designs and they were so awful in quality I returned the unopened decks for a refund.  I wouldn't use them to line a hamster cage.  I have some Ace decks in plastic - the matte-finish ones are decent, the gloss-finish ones stick together and are nearly useless.  I also have their old Magic Castle decks which were based on designs originally printed by another company (I know USPC was the printer for a while); the coating on the cards starts to stick together after only light usage, rendering the deck worthless for playing or collecting but great for starting fires.  They have the license as well for decks based on the James Bond and Star Wars movies, much to my chagrin, because I'm fond of both franchises and their decks, from what I've seen of them, are terrible - they even go the extra mile of terrible and include typographical errors in some designs.

My "favorite" are the plastic 3-D lenticular Star Wars cards - the plastic is floppy almost to the point of unshufflable and the designs, faces and backs, are painted on the back of a layer of plastic.  Imagine an open-faced sandwich - there's a layer of bread (the lenticular plastic) as the base, there's the meat (the face design, painted on the plastic, facing toward the plastic) and there's the condiments, cheese, etc. (the back design, painted on the back of the face design's paint, facing away from the plastic).  The final layer isn't coated - a casual, accidental scratch to the back paint layer can actually penetrate all the way to the face paint layer, in much the same way that scratching the "label" side of a CD or a DVD deeply enough can penetrate to the foil layer on which the disc's data is etched.  This means that after just a short while of playing with them with anything less than a "kid gloves" degree of care, the cards are left effectively ruined.  I wouldn't even consider them safe for children because of the ease with which the paint can come off and be ingested.

I would love to see Cartamundi produce genuine high-quality playing cards the likes of which would leave USPC and others quaking in fear for their market share.  But it has yet to happen and seems only less likely as time goes on.  Their sole edge in the marketplace appears to be the ability to make cards very cheaply - and it's rare that "cheap" is ever equated with "good."  A local pharmacy chain (Duane Reade, now a Walgreens subsidiary) started charging US$5.79 for a single pack of Bicycle Standards and about a buck per pack less for Play-Rights (the generic-looking, poorly thought-out replacement for the venerable, now-retired Studs brand), so apparently there will be a place for Cartamundi's cheaply-made, cheaply-sold cards for years to come (though ironically, the same chain is charging under $11 a pack for Bicycle Prestige plastic decks, which is on par with online pricing and lower than what USPC charges online from their own store)...
Card Illusionist, NYC Area
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Services for Hire - http://thedecktailor.com/
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Re: Ask the Experts at 52 Plus Joker
« Reply #174 on: April 25, 2016, 09:46:06 AM »
 

DocTw00

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Hi :)

I've got a couple of decks I would love to know the dates of, as well as an estimated value (just for myself).

Since I already opened a new topic including pictures, I'm just going to give you the link to it:

http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=9414.0

Any help would be very appreciated :)