It slowly dawned on me that decks of cards from the 1970s and 1980s are starting to get up there in age. But they are readily available, even unopened. But how to date the unopened decks? I collected a bunch of Bicycle decks from the 70s to present, and noted how you can narrow down the date of a sealed deck of cards from the changes in the tuck.
*** All dates + / 1 a year given that tucks and decks may have been made in different years ***
If you have a bar code on the bottom right that starts with a floating 0, your deck was made between 1980 - 1994.
If your have a bar code on the bottom right with a non-floating 0, your deck was made between 1995 - 2000.
Additionally, Bicycle added the Registered Trademark symbol to the front of the tuck around 1991, and added small slits in the tongue of the tuck around 1994.
Bar code was moved to the bottom left around 2000.
If anyone else has some tips for dating sealed modern Bicycle decks, like when the white cellophane pull strip was in use, add them below. And if I got something wrong, please let me know.
At some point in late 2009 (I think in October), the company shuttered the Cincinnati factory and shifted all production to the Erlanger, Kentucky plant. With rare exception, the commonly-sold decks (non-collectibles, mass-produced) made after that point had black deck seals with white writing. It took a little while thereafter for the decks to start listing "Erlanger, KY" as the company address on the side of the tuck box. After another little while, they left out the city altogether and just listed the decks as being made in the USA on one side with the company name on the other.
Also, sometime not too after the relocation, the company started taking the "legalese" text about "rights reserved" and all that and printing it on the bottom of the tuck box instead of on the tongue of the top flap - it's on the right, across from the bar code. The copyright year is always given as the year the tuck box was printed, and for mass produced decks, the copyright year is in most cases the same year that the deck itself was printed - sometimes they might have some leftover box stock at the start of a new year, but they use it up pretty quick and start using the new year version when they're done. And in this case, it is the copyright, not the trademark - the common box design in use, the one that says "STANDARD" at the bottom of the face instead of "RIDER BACK" , came into existence when they moved, in 2009. The previous model, called "Classic" by some collectors, "Rider Back" by others, and "Model 809" by USPC themselves, is still in print but only sold to magic shops and duck specialty stores - it has the same updates regarding legalese, location of the factory, etc., and is under copyright because the design came about around the middle of the 20th century - I'd guess 1950s, certainly no later than 1960s. So the boxes are still copyrighted, while the older, unique artwork still in use is trademarked (too old to be copyrighted).
For opened decks, they're super easy to date if they're new enough. Any of the new-print decks made after the relocation have additional numerals prefacing the production code printed on the Ace of Spades. Prior to this, the letter in the production code was the largest clue for when the deck was printed, and it would only reveal the year. Now, this prefix tells a more detailed story: the first two digits are the week of the year it was printed and the last two digits are the last two digits of the year. For example, this week (the week of Tuesday, April 18, 2023) would have a prefix in the production code of 1523 - we're in the 15th week of this year.
Rarely will you see this prefix bearing the starting two digits of 51 or 52: the company shuts down the plant for the winter holidays, reopening in the new year. I believe they take a similar two-week break in the summer, but I don't know precisely when - if I was guessing, I'd say coinciding with Independence Day.
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