I have an old deck known in Hochman, NU13. P113. It's a National Playing Card Company deck with three Palmer Cox Brownies on the joker.

I think mine is NU13 since the Ace of Spades says "Full House", not "Boston".   In reading about it in Hochman, there is a mention of there being two versions of this ace of spades. One marked "patent pending", the second with the patent date.

On mine, the 1890 patent date is cited on the box. The ace has 96 as the code. The joker has j84. There's no mention of a patent pending.


My deck:



First question, does anyone know how to find the patent that was granted? I have searched a number of ways on the US Patent database but not found anything relevant. 
https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/static/pages/ppubsbasic.html





I have several different versions of this joker, the others are later, perhaps Hochman 13a since they have the US corner indices.





The Second Question is more obscure. Does anyone have any idea about the intellectual property or royalty arrangement between Palmer Cox and the National Playing Card Company? Would Palmer Cox have allowed his characters to be used free by National on this and the other National Jokers such as NU18a and NU10a?


Has anyone researched this?


I have a similar royalty question on all the early Congress606 decks which used famous artwork, much of contemporary at that point, on the backs of their cards (and on the jokers in the Matching Decks). They had Dundreary on their joker for around two decades. Was all of this royalty free? Did it fall somehow under "Fair Use"? Was there any sort of agreement?

I have an array of Bicycle and other American royal cards in front of me and I have many questions.  If someone has already written all this up, I'd appreciate the referral. If not, here's some questions.  I'll just ask about the jacks in this post but I have questions about the queens and kings too.

Clubs - The jack of clubs  (should this be capitalized?) is holding a long vertical rod-like thing with a sort of arrow head on one side (the top?) and a point on the other side.  It might be a stylized spear although the point on the back of it doesn't quite make sense. Anyone know anything about it?


There is also a leaf hanging from the hat or crown of the JoC.  Again, anyone know anything?

Hearts. He has a moustache (JoC is cleanshaven) and is holding something in his hand, maybe a leaf? There is the axe behind him.
 
The Jack of Spaces is holding a type of stick has a sort of spiral to it.  It has three sections in the spiral (ie it turns around one and a half times). What is it and what is it called?

Diamonds.  The JoD is holding a rod which looks very similar to the JoC rod but with the point at both ends (not the arrowhead).  It has a curved thing coming off it which could either be the hand protector if it's a sword or, in some versions, suggests a crossbow.  Anyone know anything about it? BTW, JOD also has a moustache.

Hello card people,
In high school, back in the 1970s, I worked as a magician. One store-bought trick culminated in transforming all the cards into different jokers with different backs. I thought the jokers were dull so I started looking for more interesting jokers.  This has turned out to be lifelong (so far) hobby.

Btw: I've forgotten the trick, sound familiar to anyone?  I think it was a store-bought self running thing but I don't remember.

So I've now been collecting jokers on and off for a long time.
My collection is online at www.AmusedByJokersAmI.com

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