Rudy Presidential playing cards
Rudy Giuliani 2008 Presidential playing cards designed by Corey Ward.
Throughout most of 2007 Rudolph Giuliani, former Mayor of New York city, was a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2008 US election. But after several scandals, no success in the early primaries, and a third-place finish in Florida, Giuliani conceded the nomination and endorsed John McCain.
This pack by Parody Productions, Cincinnati, follows the same pattern as most of its earlier (and later) packs (e.g. the Bush presidential deck, 2004 or the Obama presidential deck, 2008) in which the cards have the head of Giuliani and other political and media figures (taken from photographs) sitting atop cartoon bodies, with details of their name and position beneath. The aces all show Giuliani’s head with the words “Rudy for President” above, while the kings portray him with different political slogans beneath. Judith Giuliani (Giuliani’s now ex-wife) is portrayed on the queen of spades. The 2 jokers both wear jester’s hats. Designed by Corey Ward. See the box►


Above: Rudy Giuliani Presidential playing cards published by Parody Productions, Cincinnati, USA, 2007.

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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