New York Consolidated Card Co. including L.I.Cohen, Lawrence & Cohen, Levy and Samuel Hart

Why our playing-cards look the way they do

Analysis of early playing card designs: origins, suit differences, standardization, technological ad...

Mediaeval Playing Cards

Finely executed late 19th century pack from the USA featuring courts in medieval costume.

What can we learn from mini-booklet advertisements?

Over the years I have collected a large number of mini-booklets and pocket guides offering rules and...

The Place of the Fool

This paper considers three questions relating to the Fool-card in the tarot-pack.

The Bird by Kings Wild Project

Originally titled Oriole Playing Cards, based on a deck produced by The New York Consolidated Card C...

Kuhn Khan

There is little information available about the early twentieth century card game Kuhn Kahn. It firs...

Poker Patience

Poker Patience, according to an early 20th century author, was "introduced so recently as the autumn...

Piquet: the game and its artifacts

Piquet may be the oldest card game which is still played today with origins going back to early 16th...

The Personalities and Books which shaped the game of Whist, 1860-1900

All the books described here are from Tony Hall's own collection, put together over years because of...

Majority Calling and Value Bidding in Auction Bridge; a little bit of history

The centuries-old game of Whist mutated through various stages into Contract Bridge as we know it to...

Goodall & Son Patience Boxed Sets

Goodall & Son produced a huge variety of Patience Boxed Sets at different times and for different co...

The Evolution of Whist and Bridge Boxed Sets, 1870s – 1930s

Boxed sets of cards, markers, scorers and rule booklets have been around for many decades. Some of t...

Bezique Markers, 1860-1960

Bezique is a two-player melding and trick-taking game. Dr. Pole introduced Bezique to England in 186...

Three Rare Playing Card Back Designs

Shuffle Along With History

Steamboat Cards and the Mississippi Mystique