I am picturing below, five photos of a recently discovered "magic" deck called The Wizard's Pack of Playing Cards, issued by Adams and Company, 25 Bromfield Street, Boston, MA., that is not in the Hochman Encyclopedia. Both the front of the OB and the inside front cover of the accompanying 8-page booklet of directions state "Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by Adams & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington." The first photo is of the front of the original box and the second photo shows the rather plain Ace of Spades. The third photo shows the KH which clearly indicates that this deck was manufactured by Dougherty. The cards are square cornered with no indices and the fourth photo shows the pattern back design. The cards measure 2 15/32" x 3 9/16" but, as is indicated in the instruction booklet, the deck has been taper cut (very subtly) so that one end is approximately 1/32" shorter than the opposite end, thus, enabling the user to perform a variety of tricks with these cards. The fifth photo shows the opening two pages from the booklet of directions. I found it interesting to note that later in that decade, The Waterproof Playing Card Co., would have their place of business several doors down at 50 Bromfield Street but Adams & Co. had already relocated to No. 4 Pearl Street in Boston by 1874. Although the name Adams was quite well known in Boston, I also had to wonder if there was any connection between the Adams who issued this deck and the famous S.S. Adams in N.J. who issued the many different marked decks some 50 years later.

We are delighted to tell you guys about our latest project: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire? Playing Cards
It's glad to collab with Legendary Picture & Toho to have this Official License Playing Cards collection with Room One

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/roomonecards/godzilla-x-kong-playing-cards

Your photos do this deck some justice.  Great!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/digitalcat/colorful-flash-memory-card-for-kid/

please let me know what you guys thanks, thanks

They're nice enough for what they are.  But they're flash cards for learning animal names.  Most of the collectors here are more into the international standard deck - 52 cards, four suits, 13 ranks, etc.


Good luck with the project.

EDIT: I see I'm too late.  It died with just one backer.  That might be a record - unless someone out there had a zero-backer project...

Bicycle card question...

There are hundreds of Bicycle back designs (if not more) but reference material seems to be almost universally limited to 82 vintage backs. I know there are vintage decks and modern decks but today's modern is tomorrow's vintage. What's defining that specific cutoff point?

Sorry this went so long unanswered.


This book is the main reason:
https://bicyclecards.org/mrs-robinsons/


It was printed in the 1950s and listed all the Bicycle backs that were known by the author to exist at the time.  For a long time, that was it, just those backs - I guess USPC didn't take on a lot of custom work in the pre-digital age unless you ran a casino and were planning to buy tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of decks.  Making a new deck design involved a lot of hard labor in the pre-digital days using engraved plates and other such fun, laborious methods to print.  It's not that long ago that people didn't have computers for design and print work and to make the plates for an offset printer.


You are correct in that today's new decks are tomorrow's vintage decks, and to go a step further, today's vintage decks are tomorrow's antique decks - and we don't have a category beyond antique!  A rough ballpark figure is that decks past 20 years old are vintage, decks past 100 years old are antique.


Now, there seems to be an implied question in there: where can I find the catalog that lists all of the Bicycle card backs from that booklet to today.  And you won't like the answer: there isn't one.  USPC over the years changed hands at least a half-dozen or more times, and with each change, there was a lot of upheaval in terms of taking care of what was valuable in the short term (decks printed in that moment) and not what isn't actively generating income (archives, old records, etc.).  So the records at USPC are likely not complete, and probably not well organized at this point, with much it still being stored analog, not digital.  They can certainly find a lot of stuff, but they would be very hard pressed to create a record of every single Bicycle back design and face design printed and used from the dawn of the brand to today - it's well over 130 years of info by now.