Ladbroke Sporting Casino
Ladbroke Sporting Casino caricature cartoon playing cards, U.K, c.2006.
The new Ladbrokes Casino & Sports Bar opened on the 18th July 2006, and according to the extra card in this pack it was “the first new licence to be awarded in London for nine years”. Located centrally the casino was Ladbroke’s first foray back into the land-based casino business since the 1990s.
The court cards and aces show cartoons of leading figures from four different sporting arenas: golf (hearts); cricket (clubs); horse-racing (spades); rugby (diamonds), The single joker depicts the cricket commentator Brian Johnston. The miniature-sized pips are arranged in a standard format against a rectangular yellow background. See the box►
Above: Ladbroke Sporting Casino caricature cartoon playing cards, U.K, c.2006.
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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