Official World’s Fair Souvenir, USA, 1964-6
Official souvenir pack showing 52 coloured exhibits from the New York World’s Fair, 1964-6.
This official souvenir pack presents 52 coloured exhibits from the New York World’s Fair which ran for two six-month seasons, April 22 – October 18, 1964, and April 21 – October 17, 1965. There are two jokers, one of which gives information about the publisher – Stancraft, St. Paul Minnesota. The card backs and the four aces show the Unisphere, the symbol of the Fair, produced by United States Steel. The pack was issued in a plastic box within a souvenir cardboard sleeve. See the sleeve►
Above: Official World’s Fair Souvenir playing cards published by Stancraft, St. Paul Minnesota, USA, 1964-6.
See: Hochman encyclopedia of American playing cards, p. 252, SX35.
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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