New Discovery - Alverson Comstock California Illustrated Sunset Limited

[torcams]

In an attempt to follow in the same vein as Toby's excellent recent posts, I offer here a new discovery of an undocumented (in Hochman) Alverson Comstock deck titled California Illustrated and with an image of a Sunset Limited steam locomotive on the backs with other classic Alverson Comstock "angels in the clouds" motifs. 

The deck has 52 cards plus the Lucky Baldwin Joker plus an extra card modeled after the Ace of Spades but without the triplicate-type corner indices.  They came in a two-piece telescopic case.

As with other decks from this publisher, the card faces have photo images of scenes pertaining to Lucky Baldwin's many properties and interests with captions in a unique font.  They have a photo-paper quality to them and some of the pictures have faded over time.  Nonetheless, the cards are a wonderful souvenir from an important figure in the development of California at the turn of the century.

I am not sure there is enough Sunset Limited content within the deck to make it fall under the "SR" souvenir category, so I am content to consider it S90 for my own recordkeeping.

[tobyedwards]

A truly remarkable deck, Matt! Thank you so much for sharing these images with us.

[Don Boyer]

In an attempt to follow in the same vein as Toby's excellent recent posts, I offer here a new discovery of an undocumented (in Hochman) Alverson Comstock deck titled California Illustrated and with an image of a Sunset Limited steam locomotive on the backs with other classic Alverson Comstock "angels in the clouds" motifs. 

The deck has 52 cards plus the Lucky Baldwin Joker plus an extra card modeled after the Ace of Spades but without the triplicate-type corner indices.  They came in a two-piece telescopic case.

As with other decks from this publisher, the card faces have photo images of scenes pertaining to Lucky Baldwin's many properties and interests with captions in a unique font.  They have a photo-paper quality to them and some of the pictures have faded over time.  Nonetheless, the cards are a wonderful souvenir from an important figure in the development of California at the turn of the century.

I am not sure there is enough Sunset Limited content within the deck to make it fall under the "SR" souvenir category, so I am content to consider it S90 for my own recordkeeping.

It's a lovely deck.  You could almost call them "duplicates" instead of triplicates - they have the mini-images in two of the corners as indices, but there's a different, pip-free image in the card center having nothing to do with the suit or value.

[torcams]

Don, of course you are correct with your duplicate index comment. 

The aces however do have pips in the centers of the cards and now that I am looking at them, I realize that I would be remiss in not including them in this post.  See attached:

[Don Boyer]

Thanks for this topic.  I have to say, while technologically we're leaps and bounds ahead, in terms of sheer artistry, there's something to be said about some of these vintage and antique decks.  They were made in a way that people simply don't make decks (or darn near anything else) any more.