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Playing Card Chat ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦ => A Cellar of Fine Vintages => Topic started by: Lydian on June 17, 2015, 07:04:18 PM
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Ok guys, please help me feel better! I just missed out on this deck, I'd never actually heard of until a few days ago. Even on google couldn't find any information.
Golden gate vintage deck. Arco tax stamp, almost certainly pre 1965. Due to the history of the casino itself also.
Lee, anyone else shed any light on this deck? Also to it's value. I would have paid up to 350 on impulse if my ipad hadn't crashed. Would this have been worth it? I'm kicking myself at the moment that I missed it.
Link is here to the sold one with a picture.
http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/371348915888?NAV=HOME
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Ok guys, please help me feel better! I just missed out on this deck, I'd never actually heard of until a few days ago. Even on google couldn't find any information.
Golden gate vintage deck. Arco tax stamp, almost certainly pre 1965. Due to the history of the casino itself also.
Lee, anyone else shed any light on this deck? Also to it's value. I would have paid up to 350 on impulse if my ipad hadn't crashed. Would this have been worth it? I'm kicking myself at the moment that I missed it.
Link is here to the sold one with a picture.
http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/371348915888?NAV=HOME
That's not a tax stamp - it's a manufacturer's stamp. That makes it 1965 or NEWER, not older. That particular stamp was in use from some time after the tax was repealed to some time in the late 1970s. In '65, they started using a gold stamp, and at some year thereafter (precise date is unknown) they switched to a blue stamp design, which was then replaced with a sticker-type seal in the late 1970s until the company was bought by USPC in '87.
Here's some info on the seal: https://sites.google.com/site/cardconjurer/article/dating/manufacturersseals
The box design is rather interesting - looks a lot like Jerry's Nuggets, which were made in 1970, so these are probably contemporary to those, plus or minus a couple of years. The stamp is Arrco, but the Ace of Spades says it's a Paul-son deck - Paulson is still around today, as a division of a company called Gaming Partners International, which also owns Gemaco. I guess at some time in the not-too-distant past, Paulson was somehow associated with Arrco.
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Thats brilliant, thanks for that clarification. Would you have said they're worth as much as the $300+ someone has paid for them?
I feel a bit better now, for some reason I'd thought they were this insanely rare deck that I hadn't heard of. Makes a lot more sense now.
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There are a lot of cards from that era that have had their prices driven upward. I blame Jerry's Nugget decks. There's that one run of souvenir decks from 1970 that used to sell for 50ยข in their gift shop and now trade for over $300.
Magicians started using them in their acts because they handled well and they were cheap (though even they joked about how ugly they were, in garish red and blue colors with the casino's derrick logo). Some of those magicians used them in their training videos, so they became "famous." Magicians wanted them, then collectors, followed soon thereafter by speculators - which drove the price up.
Now any deck even vaguely similar to the "J-Nuggs" has had the price forced upward by market forces, regardless of the true rarity. In fact, no one knows even how rare (or not rare!) the Jerry's Nugget decks really are, as there seems to be a LOT of them out there and that's not even counting the counterfeits that have been circulating (and getting better, unfortunately, though still nowhere near as good as the original).
So, would the value of this deck have risen on the same tide as the rest of the decks of that era? Likely. But $300+ high? That's some pretty deep water, and the deck's not USPC-made like the Jerry's were, so I'd be forced to say "Likely not that high." However, that's solely my opinion - others may feel differently.
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Those are definitely Arrco pips. We've learned something -- that Paulson had a relationship with Arrco for playing cards, perhaps before Paulson had established its own designs.
Gemaco had USPC make bridge-size advertising decks with its logo below a generic USPC ace (and with USPC face cards) in the late 60s and early 70s. I have not seen any poker-sized or casino cards from this combination, however.
Chris Turner
52 + J member