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Playing Card Chat ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦ => A Cellar of Fine Vintages => Topic started by: joshsearles on May 01, 2016, 04:36:30 PM

Title: Rarity of green-back steamboat deck
Post by: joshsearles on May 01, 2016, 04:36:30 PM

Hi fellow enthusiasts,

I've just recently stumbled upon a USPC steamboat deck that I'm trying to figure out the rarity of. I know the blue backs were the most prevalent of the time, but haven't seen to many of them with a green back. Could anyone share some light on this conundrum of mine?

Thanks in advance!


Best,

-Josh

Title: Re: Rarity of green-back steamboat deck
Post by: Don Boyer on May 02, 2016, 06:55:15 AM

The best I can tell you is that at one time in history, green and brown were semi-popular colors for playing card decks.  Many Bicycle backs were made available in red, blue, green (in that shade) and brown.  Over time, many of the backs were dropped from production in green and brown - red and blue were simply more popular.  By the time I was a kid (1970s), green and brown were practically unheard of.

I'd say they are certainly not as common, but how rare I don't know myself.  To be honest, this is the first one I'm seeing, but my vintage collection is pretty small so that shouldn't be a big surprise.  I'd be interested in trying to figure out the age of the deck based on the face designs - for example, that index typeface was almost certainly out of use in my era, and quite probably for a couple of decades prior.  I also seem to recall that it was only the older decks from around the start of the 20th century (plus or minus a decade or so) that had the Russell & Morgan Factories mentioned on the Ace of Spades.