Mass Effect playing cards

Published December 24, 2023 Updated December 23, 2023

Mass Effect playing cards published by Dark Horse Deluxe, USA, 2012.

2012 USA Dark Horse Video Games

Mass Effect is a successful video game developed by Casey Hudson in 2007. It has since become a franchise developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. Mass Effect 2 was produced in 2010 and the Mass Effect 3 in 2012.

This pack published by Dark Horse Deluxe in January 2012 (© 2011) features named characters from the game on the aces, court cards and the jokers. Pip cards are standard and set against a dark blue background (black suits) and light blue background (red suits). The reverse depicts N7 - in the game N is the designation for Special Forces. 7 is the highest order.

Mass Effect playing cards published by Dark Horse Deluxe, USA, 2012 Mass Effect playing cards published by Dark Horse Deluxe, USA, 2012
Mass Effect playing cards published by Dark Horse Deluxe, USA, 2012

Above: Mass Effect playing cards published by Dark Horse Deluxe, USA, 2012

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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.

Russian Playing Cards

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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