Rika playing cards

Skiing doesn’t often feature on playing cards, yet one imagines that skiers must often indulge in card games on cold, dark evenings. In this pack, the photos on the double-ended court cards are of famous Austrian skiers of the 1970s, all looking quite cheerful. The skiers depicted include Franz Klammer, Werner Grissmann, Nicola Spiess, Elfi Deufl, Toni Innauer, and Karl Schnabl. What the pack was produced for remains a mystery: the backs are blank and there is no text on the tuck box. Was this a prototype to get different advertisers to add their own back design or do these packs represent an overrun where the backs were never printed? See the box►

Above: Rika playing cards made by Piatnik, Vienna, Austria, 1978. 24 cards + 1 blank card in tuck box. Size: 65 x 98 mm.