Collectors pack of Antiques
Collectors pack of Antiques playing cards published by Collectors Cards, Abertillery, South Wales, c.1980.
This pack was manufactured and produced for Collectors Cards, Abertillery, South Wales by Waddingtons Playing Card Company, Leeds. Each of the 52 cards displays a different antique – furniture, porcelain, pottery, clocks, glassware, antique weapons, etc. – beneath which is a brief description and an approximate valuation. Two additional information cards serve as jokers: the first lists the silver marks of six major UK cities, and the second lists the historical periods used to help define an antique’s date of manufacture. See the box►
Above: Collectors pack of Antiques published by Collectors Cards, Abertillery, South Wales, c.1980.
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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