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Playing Card Chat ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦ => A Cellar of Fine Vintages => Topic started by: Anthony on November 15, 2013, 11:58:33 PM
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Ok, time to feel stupid but I have to ask.........
Can someone explain what "Squeezers" means or implies or whatever? I see it on Bees and a couple other decks but have no idea what it refers to. Feel free to chuckle ;)
Thanks
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Hey Sparkz
Bicycle's site actually has an article about it: http://www.bicyclecards.com/news/story/the-story-behind-bulldog-squeezers . It's an interesting read, but long story short, before 1860s, there was no pips or numbers on the side of the cards so you had to spread out the cards in your hand to see it. They introduced the side pips and numbers so you could "squeeze" the cards in your hand slightly and be able to see what you have.
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Sweet, thanks Brendan ;)
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There's a good deal of detail left out of that article...
The Bulldog version of Squeezers was a deck made to commemorate, of all things, anti-competitive practices in the playing card manufacturing business!
"Squeezers" was a general term seen in a lot of brand names, and it represented the fact that there was an index in the corner of the card that allowed you to squeeze them together in your hand. Without indices, you had to spread your cards out, examining the faces and taking a risk on revealing at least part of your hand.
New York Consolidated Card Company, the company that made Bee decks before it was bought by USPC, created their "Squeezers" playing cards with indices much like the ones used today, but much smaller. Andrew Dougherty, also of New York and creator of Tally Ho playing cards, came out with a competing product called "Triplicates", which used miniature pictures of the card faces in the corners instead - three images, hence Triplicates. In 1877, the companies hammered out an under-the-table deal whereby they split up the country and agreed to make their specially-indexed decks for sale only within their own territory. The Bulldog Squeezers back displays this visually, with a dog named "Squeezer" and a dog named "Trip" each chained to their respective dog houses and barking at each other under the moon, with the motto "There is a tie that binds us to our Homes" printed along the bottom. Dougherty eventually came out with "Indicators", indexed in the same manner as "Squeezers". The two companies merged in 1930 into Consolidated Dougherty, and in 1962 the companies were dissolved and absorbed into USPC.
New York Consolidated itself is also the creation of a conglomeration of companies in 1871: Lawrence & Cohen. Samuel Hart & Co. and John J. Levy. Lewis I. Cohen (of Lawrence & Cohen) started making cards in 1832, and made a huge innovation in playing cards when he created the first version of a CMYK printing press, allowing for four-color printing on playing cards in 1835, an innovation that changed the industry. Making color playing card designs was no longer a laborious, handmade process. Lots of history in there...
My information sources:
http://www.wopc.co.uk/usa/squeezers/squeezers-35.html
http://www.wopc.co.uk/usa/dougherty/index.html
http://www.wopc.co.uk/usa/nyccc/index.html
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Thanks to you too Don, you are the master of detail, LOL (Thanks for the links also)
I do have a question though and maybe I'm not asking the question correctly, but if "Squeezers" was the term used to indicate you could squeeze your hand since you now had corner images, which almost all modern decks now do, when your looking at something like the Bee deck I posted or any modern deck marked as a "Squeezer" deck are you buying a reproduction of an early deck design/release?
I guess what I'm saying is, I can understand branding decks "Squeezers" when they 1st came out, but why brand them as such now?
I hope that makes sense.
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Thanks to you too Don, you are the master of detail, LOL (Thanks for the links also)
I do have a question though and maybe I'm not asking the question correctly, but if "Squeezers" was the term used to indicate you could squeeze your hand since you now had corner images, which almost all modern decks now do, when your looking at something like the Bee deck I posted or any modern deck marked as a "Squeezer" deck are you buying a reproduction of an early deck design/release?
I guess what I'm saying is, I can understand branding decks "Squeezers" when they 1st came out, but why brand them as such now?
I hope that makes sense.
I've seen a few decks named "Squeezers" - the Bulldog Squeezers, the Angel Back Squeezers, the Bee 216 Squeezers, and the Bee Erdnaseum deck from CARC. Only the Erdnaseum deck was a new design, and it was still modeled after an older deck. The others were designs dating back perhaps a century or more.
Why use the brand? Why use any brand, when you think about it... Why call a deck "Bicycle" or "Bee" or "Steamboat" or "Streamline" or any of the other classic names? Perhaps it's tradition, perhaps it's because collectors like us like the old names and the old designs.
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Thanks so much for all the info, much better understanding of the "Squeezers". I do appreciate the information and help very much :)