Hello all,

My name is Earl and I am a new member of the 52PlusJoker community. I joined the club because I have recently begun collecting playing cards - both full decks and individual cards - as a hobby. With my work as a poker journalist, I am around cards frequently and have always been intrigued by the diversity of cards there are...as such, I started collecting them!

My first piece was an 18th century Persian AsNas card. AsNas was the predecessor of poker, played by the royalty of India. It is quite special to me because it does have the ties to poker and it was the first piece I purchased. I have gone on to gather decks from several countries, including the old Soviet Union, Germany, Iceland and Austria (among others) and have collected individual cards from Japan and France that date back to the 18th century.

I am not sure where my interest in collecting is going to go. I know I would like to be a historian of cards in a way and I would like to keep expanding my collection. It is fortunate that I've found a group of like-minded individuals that follow this track and I look forward to learning more about collecting, the history of cards and card games.

Thanks for the time (if you made it this far!) and look forward to interacting with all of you!

Earl