Great inventions playing cards
Great inventions playing cards designed by Gary Wyatt, United Kingdom, 2011.
Great inventions playing cards were published in 2011 by the Green Board Game Co (established 1991) and designed by its founder Gary Wyatt. Each of the 52 cards display a picture of an everyday object from all aspects of modern-day life, beneath which is the name of the inventor, and the date and country of invention. While the cards have two-corner indices, the suit symbol is present on all four corners. The two jokers both display a whoopee cushion, while an extra card advertises the Company’s BrainBox game. We learn from the tuck box that the content of the cards has been “approved by the Science Museum, London”. See the box►
Above: Great inventions playing cards designed by Gary Wyatt, United Kingdom, 2011.
By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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