Greenpeace anti-nuclear playing cards
Greenpeace anti-nuclear pack with facts and figures, United Kingdom, 2003.
Unlike the later Greenpeace playing cards which display naive drawings of penguins, seals, whales and dolphins, this earlier pack presents facts about the history and development of nuclear weapons and the threat of their proliferation. Facts and figures are presented on all the cards, including the 2 jokers, with the exception of the aces and kings of each suit. These cards show photographs of the Presidents or Prime Ministers of 8 countries which are known to possess nuclear weapons, with information about the size of their stockpile : China, France, India, Israel, Russia, Pakistan, United Kingdom and the USA. There is an extra card which describes Greenpeace’s first anti-nuclear protest in 1971.
Above: Greenpeace anti-nuclear playing cards, 2003.
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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