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Playing Card Chat ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦ => A Cellar of Fine Vintages => Topic started by: shadeone on February 20, 2019, 11:08:00 AM
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I'm thinking of starting a collection of decks that soldiers would have had during WWII. I have my grandfather's airplane spotter deck that he carried with in northern Africa and Italy during the war, but I was just wondering what other decks would have been given by the Red Cross (obviously the red tuck box "Red Cross" gift deck), or sold at the base PX stores. I've found a number of them that have the "for use of us govt" stamped on them with WWII dates, and then some others that are just claimed to be WWII decks but are definitely from the time, with the war bond cards included etc... Let me know if there are any others I should add to this visual checklist (not my decks, pics found on internet)
Arrco Service De Luxe
(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/9008/tvk9qb.jpg)
Aviator "Red Cross"
(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/6484/2Se1Kq.jpg)
Invincible:
(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/8161/AYKrWE.jpg)
Mowhawk:
(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img921/6396/ij5EX7.jpg)
Triumph:
(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/1919/VHZAgu.jpg)
Uncle Sam:
(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img921/9320/1JTWiT.jpg)
Toepedo:
(https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/9259/JMm8T6.jpg)
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You've chosen a good niche to collect, for certain - old enough to be rare, not so old as to be phenomenally rare or super expensive.
Those print-stamped decks were stamped as such to show that taxes didn't have to be paid - notice none of the ones with government stamps have a tax stamp stuck where the flap meets the box, as a seal. The government also had a tax-free stamp seal that was used for government-issue decks at that time - there's a good article on it in a back issue of Card Culture magazine.
Consider as well that some servicemen probably got decks sent to them in the mail by the folks back home. You can look at tracking down common, popular decks of the period that weren't necessarily government-issued, if you wanted to expand the collection scope a little.