Thank you for the kind words.
I see your point about being a collector...in a non-typical sense of the term.
Most of what I have from the initial auction ot is from 18xx to early 1900's as my best guess to date.
U.S Playing Card Co. - GEM - Congress - Jeu Louis BP Grimaud - Excelsior
Although after reading through a number of posts here I am intrigued by some of the modern decks...particularly with exceptional graphics and themes. I could never be the type to not open a deck and feel the weight and coating...even if I didn't realize it till now, it was always my favorite part of poker night.
What section(if there is a separate area) should I check or post in for information regarding mini decks of cards?
I know what you mean about feeling the cards. Some collectors practically fetishize their decks, enshrining them on a shelf while still sealed in cellophane, never to be opened (at least not while it's in their possession)!
As far as mini-decks go, they don't get talked about a lot here, but it does come up now and then, mostly in terms of either mini versions of modern custom decks or vintage models. As a general rule, if a deck has your basic 52 cards and perhaps a joker or two, it fits in this forum, no problem. Bridge decks are about the same - they come up now and again, but only infrequently. Most of the discussion deals with poker-sized cards, also called "wide" or "standard." Bridge decks are sometimes called "narrow," while mini-decks are sometimes called "patience" or "solitaire" decks. A bridge hand has a lot of cards, so a more narrow card allows smaller hands to hold them all, while the mini decks are great for playing a game requiring a lot of table space, like many solitaire games do, "patience games" being the more popular term internationally for solitaire card games. Outside the US and Canada, "solitaire" often refers to the cross-shaped peg game where a player jumps pegs one at a time, trying to leave him- or herself with only one peg at the end.
Vintage/antique cards are discussed in A Cellar of Fine Vintages while modern decks are chatted about in the Playing Card Plethora. "Vintage" is any deck over 20 years old and "antique" would be in the ballpark of 80 years old or more. A rough rule of thumb would be that a vintage deck is at least a generation old while an antique deck is about a lifetime old (presently, about four generations, a full generation lasting about two decades, or the amount of time from your birth and the births of your peers to that of your children and their peers).
Specialized decks for magic (gimmick decks, marked, etc.) go in the Magical Cardistry Bonanza, as would any decks specially designed for cardistry which do NOT conform to the International Standard. For example, if there's a deck with no values or suits, just pretty-looking faces and backs and very smooth handling characteristics, that's a deck that isn't of the Standard but might be very well-suited for cardistry. A definition of cardistry: take the fancy cuts, fans and other card manipulations that magicians sometimes do to show off their handling skills, separate it from magic into an art form in its own right and you have cardistry. It's also known as flourishing and XCM (eXtreme Card Manipulation). As an independent art form, cardistry is pretty young yet, not much older than a decade or so, if not less.
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