Politicards 1971
Politicards 1971 for the presidential election in which Richard Nixon won a landslide victory.
This was the first pack of Politicards to be produced. The pack was created in 1971 and released in 1972 in anticipation of that Fall's presidential election. This was the election in which incumbent Republican president Richard Nixon defeated Democratic U.S. senator George McGovern in an historic-level landslide. The cards were conceived and designed by the (then) 26-year-old designer and illustrator Peter Green. The cards humorously depict various politicians, candidates, wives of politicians, celebrities, and other familiar faces (such as Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, J. Edgar Hoover, Bob Hope, and Jane Fonda). The 2 jokers are Norman Mailer and William F. Buckly. See the key card►
Above: Politicards 1971 illustrated by Peter Green, published in 1972.
• See the box►
Subsequent "Politicards" have come out over the years with cartoons created by various artists.
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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