I like the story behind a deck, and I wrote about the history of this deck yesterday but it disappeared. I'll give you the short version.
I got this deck from my mother-in-law. She had gotten it from an older relative when she was about ten years old. This was in the thirties, my mother-in-law is 86 now. The older relative had a lot of games and stuff that she let my mother-in-law play with. My mother-in-law said that she could play with everything except this deck, it was being stored in a glass cabinet, not to be touched. She recalls, she used to look into the cabinet with her nose pressed against the glass.
When she got it she did what kids usually does when they get someting, she used it and showed her friends so it is not in great condition now, nevertheless it is a nice deck to have.
When I asked about the history, she said that the older relatives father or uncle was a store owner travelling around Europe, buying things to sell in the store, from about 1880 and up till World War One begun. Probably he brought it home from one of his travels.

The deck:
It has all 52 cards and no indices, apart from handdrawn numbers on the higher number cards.
The box is in pretty bad condition and I don't know what to do about it, so any advice on that is greatly appreciated.
Some of the cards have creases and some of the paint on the nine of hearts is gone.
I think it is from sometime in the beginning of 1900. I base this on the lack of jokers and indices, and that Dondorf changed its name to Dondorf GmbH 1906. The faces are the same as the "Baronesse Whist no.160".

OK, so here is one of my designs for the DDDC. I must warn you, This will be a long post, but I'll do my very best to keep it as short as possible. This is a tale about what not to do when designing a deck.

It was some years ago, when I bought my first decks from Ellusionist. I liked the Artifice and the Infinity decks, but the standard Bicycles I had really never been very fond of. Remember, I live in a country where most decks look like this: http://www.wopc.co.uk/sweden/standard.html
I was quite perplexed when I later found out that I could actually have my own design printed on a deck of playing cards. I researched this for some time, and so, one particularly rainy day in September, I set out to create my own set of cards.

From the beginning I wanted them to have the Swedish design, with the colorcoded suits and the more clothing-like bodies, but in the style of the standard Bicycle design. That idea failed before even hitting the preliminary-sketch stage. I realised that my ability to draw on the computer wasn't quite up to par for a project of that magnitude. Thus I abandoned the suits for now, and decided to work on the pips instead, I am kind of fond of pips, I like the simplicity of the shapes.
 I wanted the basic shape intact but with a more "flowing" feeling, and thus, I came up with this:

I am rather pleased with them.

On to the font, I first tried to edit the standard font but then opted for the Birch std font,

 allthough I might have to change that, since I've seen at least two other decks with that font recently.
It was at this point in time I somehow thought that I had enough of cool designs to send it to Ellusionist as a design for a deck... Oh, how naive can you be? I hope that they never saw it.
Feeling stuck, I abandoned the project and went on to design the X-ray deck: http://www.playingcardforum.com/design-development/x-ray-deck/msg67306/#msg67306
Almost six months later I was ready to look at my failed attempt again. This time I changed direction regarding the court design. Knowing my weaknesses, I opted to use the standard courts design but simplify it to only use two printed colors, yet keeping it fairly interesting. After some fiddling with colors, this is what I came up with:










See that ace of spades? It looks like that because of the back. Ah, the back...The beginning of the end.
I began fiddling with the back and ace of spades after the courts were finished. I like the back and ace to have a unified design, so that one can see that the ace and back is from the same deck, don't ask me why because I really don't know, I just do.
I downloaded some free ornaments and stuff from the net and began fiddling with them to create a back and ace. I mean, how hard can it be? Smack on some nice stock design and you're done...  So I did several different versions, some of which I kinda liked... And then someone here on this forum mentioned that stock designs looks sooo merz67... I quietly disregarded these designs and set out to create my own back and ace. Looking back, I'm glad I saw that line about stock designs, because truth be told, they didn't look all that great. I won't bore you with those designs unless you really want to see them.

However I will show you my first attempt at my own back design:

I tried to get in some of the flowing style from the pips.
Suddenly, I got stuck, I felt as if I had no real vision, no aim, with this design.There was nothing in my mind that had to be spilled onto the paper, It was a cold, desolate place. A chilly wind howled through the empty chambers. Frustrated, I looked around me at the desk, and spotted, out of the corner of my eye, an old cigarette box,  Halpaus Privileg, Halpaus cigaretten fabrik, Breslau u Köln, that I had gotten from my father in law, many years ago. (Hmmm, I have to check if there is some copyright issues with that box.) It was an interesting design that I tried to mimic, but failed miserably, thus I resorted to take some photographs of it and cleaning the pics up and trying to get it symmetrical.
This is the end result:


There, I was finished!
I was just about to post it to the forums when someone mentioned that a deck design should have a strong theme to stand a chance today... A theme??? What the bleeping bleep in the bleep with a bleep??? I looked at my design, there was, of course, no theme in sight.
But as I sat there, dreary with the impending doom looming overhead, I noticed that the more I looked at the back, the more, in my state of utter despair, it looked like some kind of whirlwind or maelstrom, dragging me down into the depths of lunacy, down, in a sea of madness.
I came to some time later, my clothes in rags, clawmarks on my chest, and on the screen before me, in bright shining images, were this:

and this:

Ouch, that box lost some stuff in translation, and I need to learn how to do to get that box to look like a box.
Anyway, I need some help here, so if anyone can provide any advice, please do.

OK... Introduction.

Short version:

Hello, I'm Leif from Sweden. I started to collect decks about six months ago. I have about sixteen decks now. Not counting Swedish ones.

Medium version:

Hello. My name is Leif. I live in the northern part of Sweden. I began collecting decks about six months ago when I discovered that I had only one USPCC deck (Iraqi most wanted, a novelty gift from a friend in USA) and one, old, deck from Charta Mundi, named Cadet. Of course, I had some Swedish decks, but those are only good for... um... let's see... I'll have to get back on that one. So, I began to look around for some nice decks. Thus, I embarked on my journey to discover the best deck ever created by man, yeah, that's more like it! I noticed that people on youtube often used a deck named Bicycle, in a shi...number of different varieties. However those decks seems to be rather difficult to find here in Sweden. So I googled and found Ellusionist and Theory 11, but in the end I settled for E because I liked their sample pack deal. So now I am the owner of 11 E decks and some standard bicycle decks and some other decks from a friend who lives in the USA. I open all my decks, so if I'm going to start some serious collection, I'll have to start buying two of each. I do actually have two of one rather rare deck, but more on that in the:

Long version:

Hello, my name is Leif. I live in the far north of Sweden, with my wife and kids, in the harbor society or community of a small town.

When I was a small kid about the age of seven, I saw a magician perform on the television, It might have been David Copperfield or Siegfried and Roy, and I knew I wanted to be a magician!
I had seen someone doing some card trick, probably someone my mother was dating, I remember a very ugly beard, think Flying Pickets, Only you. So, I devised a rather clever Turning-the-top-and-bottom-cards-and-then-turning-the-whole-deck-upside-down-behind-my-back-while-the-spectator-examined-the-card-they-had-chosen scheme, so that when they inserted the card in the deck I held firmly, the whole deck was, in fact, upside down, except for the top and bottom cards... Sneaky! Then I just turned my back, looked through the deck until I found the card that was upside down, and showed it triumphantly to them. And my dear mother, who was the first one I showed it to, said: You turned the deck when you had it behind you, now go tidy your room, and stop with that magic nonsense. Defeated and broken  I returned to my room and abandoned my dream of becoming an magician. And she never bought me that magic for kids box I'd been nagging her about for years, either.

Fast forward 35 years.

Me and my friends at a friendly Texas hold'em game. Suddenly, I realised that all of my friends were much better than me at shuffling the cards. When I did it, it felt awkward, even when I did that sawing motion, trying frantically to get them between eachother. Not to mention the few times I tried a riffle shuffle. When I did that, the deck split up in four parts, first, half of the cards in the left hand, BAM, then the same for the right, BAM, then the rest of the left hand cards, BAM, then the last to the right, BAM. Not so much riffling, more like Bamming... The BAM shuffle! You can imagine the embarrassment.

That's when it struck me, this is how far I'd let it slip? I used to know this stuff, when I was a kid I could do a onehanded cut, but now, not even a halfdecent shuffle? And that's when I decided to pick up my old dream, brush of the dust, put it back in my heart and, if not pursue it, so at least try to learn some tricks and sleights. At least so that I finally can win a friendly game of Hold'em.
That night, when I came home to practice, that's when I found out the sorry state my playing cards was in.

These are the decks I have so far:

From E
Infinity
Artifice emerald
Arcane white and black
Bicycle 1800 blue
Fathom
Sultan republic
2x Sultan treasury (I happened to buy them in a glitch on the E website in December)
2x Bicycle masters blue
2x Bicycle rider back blue

Gifted from a friend:
Bicycle robocycle
Bicycle Jumbo blue
Bicycle Pinochle
Iraqi most wanted

Oh, and that Charta mundi deck... It was my wife's. Besides, the facial expressions on that decks courts looks like they are... constipated.

So, basically I have learned* some simple tricks, (Brad's email series and some youtube videos) some different shuffling techniques, (faro, riffle! and poker) Some different cuts, both false and true. Tried some flourishing stuff but that is too hard for me right now. my fans for example looks good only with brand new decks.

*Learned, as in, I "know" how to do something, and can do it somewhat decent, but not near anything with flow or style.

The few tricks I have done so far has really impressed my friends. I get REALLY nervous though.

Some notes about Swedish playing cards:

This is a link to a page with Swedish playing cards:
http://www.wopc.co.uk/sweden/standard.html
The deck I have beside me as I type this looks like this, with some slight differences to the faces.
All Swedish decks I have seen are bridge size, even though the box is marked "Poker".
Admittedly, I'm probably not the best at fanning decks, but anyone who can fan a new deck of Swedish cards, I declare fanmeister on the spot. I fanned the 1800's, looked awesome, ten seconds later I "fanned" a new deck of Swedish cards, looked horribly, cards were clumped up 4-5 together, with big gaps in the fan.

My preferences in playing cards decks:

I like my decks to be more custom rather than less, that is why I bought from E rather than T11.
But not TOO custom, I will not buy the Russian egg deck for example, and the robocycle is balancing on the edge. Infinity or Seasons are perfect in terms of customization.
I like the Divine back more than the new Daniel Madison, even though I think it is a tad overdone. The Fathom is very nice, although the Artifice back is my favorite right now
I like decks with a border.

I didn't find the perfect deck, so I decided to design it myself, but of course I ran into some trouble, trouble that I hope You, dear fellow collectors can help me sort out.

Cheers