These decks are beautiful. Honestly its hard to even find photos of these backs online outside of the Vintage Backs guide. I own a couple sets of the Big Gun reprints and at one time I wished the others were reprinted as well. However, over time I have changed course and hope they aren't replicated. The appeal of having something out there so elusive is just great. Does anyone know if the Big Gun back reprint was initiated by the USPCC or a third party? Is there a special permission needed to reprint old deck backs like these?
This was a project of USPC. They didn't issue too many - not sure of number. They brought a gross - that's 12 bricks for you younger guys! - to give away to the attendees at the 52+Joker convention at Erlanger in 2012. At the time they talked about doing all four because they needed to see the real decks which could only be provided by a few people in the club [they don't have any]. They guy who organized this is no longer there and the project has died.
Now I could be mistaken on this, but I'm fairly certain that these reprints were done in a print run of 5,000 of each color, red and blue. I get the feeling that USPC thought this was their chance to really nail down the vintage reprint market - they were originally only sold in two-deck matched sets, and a set was something like $40. The cards weren't being sold individually - you couldn't just get a red one without getting a blue one. It's not like they came in a fancy box or anything, but they insisted on combining them and charging a princely sum. Another odd feature - despite going through all that trouble reproducing the period box as well as the card back, the faces were 100% modern faces - even the Ace of Spades and the jokers were the standard Bicycle model, making no mention of being part of the War Series or anything. Face up, you'd think they were the Bicycles from the corner drug store.
They were very slow to sell - can you imagine why?
After perhaps a year or two on the market, Wingra Direct (shopbicyclecards.com) threw in the towel and started selling these for $0.99 a pack on clearance. I picked up I think two bricks at the time and I've since traded a few away. It also got people watching the clearance listing there like a hawk - it wasn't long after that the pink Harley Davidson "butterfly" deck went on clearance! Now THAT was a seriously bad idea if ever there was one!
As mentioned, this deck ended up on the scrap heap, yet-another incomplete series that USPC started but never finished. I'd be really shocked if they finally managed to make a collectible series of some kind and took it all the way to the very end - I'm still waiting on their "Special Edition" decks #3-10!
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