Monday, February 9, 2009

M&M Jokers - How to count?


I

don't actively collect jokers but still, I tend to keep getting them. Today for instance, I cleaned out my wallet. These six jokers were there, recently collected. The two M&M jokers were bought by me in New York and the M&M store. Now, who would have thought that an M&M themed store could possibly support the rent for a Times Square retail space.

The two top jokers are pretty common although the smaller joker, scanned upside down, is a little unusual.

The other pair of jokers are a little uncommon although not strikingly original or beautiful.

Now I have a technical question on joker collection. I would count these six jokers as six different jokers. The two M&M jokers have different color type. The others are each strikingly different in color although not in design.

Am I following the same counting conventions as other joker collectors?

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Jokers - Page 4 - Horse jokers


I themed each page in the joker collection. This is one of the equestrian themed pages.


Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Jokers of History

Jokers of History
Jokers of  History - Playing Card Jokers
The top three jokers on this page are of old balloons. The ones in position one and three are dated 1784 and 1803 (not the jokers, the images!). The look like old French engravings.
The bottom six are historical characters.
My wife and daughter are coming downstairs. I need to put this stuff away before they catch me at it. I'll scan more later if I can......

Jokers of Death & Destructions

Joker Cards of Death and Destruction
Jokers of Death and Destruction
These somewhat surealistic jokers have a destruction and death theme. There are weapons and and a skeleton. Actually, they don't all have this theme. Again, I'm not sure who the picture is of. If you could tell me, I'd appreciate it.

Vivid bold jokers


I like all nine of these jokers. Each has vivid bold imagery.
The hat joker reminds me of Dick Tracy.

Cheesy Cheapy jokers


You can tell from the title of this page that these are not my favorites. Yes they're colorful

. They're also pretty common and all slightly silly.

The two that merit the most attention are in position one and three in the top row. It's a characterture of I'm not sure whom.

Jokers sitting cross legged


UPDATE AVAILABLE.  QUICKLY CLICK THROUGH TO AN UPDATED PAGE ABOUT SEATED JOKERS.

These nine sitting jesters have long been favorites of mine. The three at the bottom are commonly seen. They have devilish look about them.

The six above them are slightly rarer. I think the middle row is pretty rare. The jester is holding his bauble in one hand and a card in another.

Modern art jokers


Modern Art Joker Playing Card
Modern Art Joker Playing Cards

These colorful jokers are amongst my favorites. I really like the colorful pair at the bottom.

They are from a "Beautiful Transformation Limited Edition Pak" created by Peter Wood. I believe the limited edition was only one thousand. From the UK.

Peter's work is gorgeous. My scan didn't do it justice so I pulled a picture from his website. Thanks Peter.
And whats with the HiddenMickey weirdness. Do something sane....collect jokers. lol.


Joker Collections - The others

Heides Jokers - Amazing collection organized across 5 pages. Particularly cool are the oldies and hand painted. Jokers Galore Jesters Planet. Oddly stored at Kaboodle. Dot Pattern Collecting Site - Joker Page - 22 Joker collections. Not updated since ...2005? Huub Wolters Paddy's jokers Little Joker (Spanish) Jos Jokers Sezgi's Joker Blog 

Just added from comments - Oct 2020:
Latvanyterkepek - Hungarian Jokers
But not this one: Greetings > > http://szlemik.bloog.pl/  - Andrzej (anszpo@wp.pl) - since the URL doesn't appear to be jokers. I probably should try the email...

 If you'd like to be mentioned, comment here and I'll approve it. I would appreciate it if you would also mention my little collection.

There's an update to this article started in early 2020 about other online joker collections.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Jokers P5 - Some more patterns


These jokers are slighly colorful and have more interesting patterns than the other pattern page.

Playing card jokers - logos

These jokers are all visually similiar, at least to my eye. I think of them as the simple design jokers.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Nine Flying Jokers

This is the second page of my  joker collection. By jokers, I'm talking about the joker from playing cards.  I've collected for many decades. Collecting doesn't mean that I do it all day, or even daily or weekly or monthly. In fact, there have been years wereh I probably didn't really spend any time on my joker collection. I guess we all waste time.

Here is page from one of my albums where I've assembled nine jokers that each have an image that includes something that flies. I'm assuming the image in the middle on the bottom is a dragon that can fly.
flying Jokers
Flying Playing Card Jokers
And here's  a much larger display of flying jokers.

Or if you prefer, cat and dog jokers.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Musically themed jokers


This page was organized as a musical instrumental with a flute or banjo joker theme.

I recommend that you click through to the  much better post on jokers with a musical theme.

Joker - A musical theme

Congratulations to anybody who found this obscure page. I highly recommend you quickly leave this page and go to the much better article on musical jokers or the one on Elvis, the Musical King, a joker


I tried to group my jokers by theme when I put them  in the albums. The albums have a place for nine jokers on each page. So I get to look through piles of jokers and discover themes based on content, color, hats or whatever.  This page of jokers has a musical theme.

I've seen the other collections online. They are so much better curated than mine that I hesitate to show mine. Others have studied, analyzed, categorized and in particularly,  they seem to know a great about the origin of each joker and the significance of so many details. In many cases, they have the date of publication of the jokers!

Me, I just collected the jokers and put them in albums. I'm sort of a low end joker collector.

(Note that this next paragraph is really meant to make me feel like I'm working on my day job when I'm really futzing with my joker collection. Because it has references to pages on my business sites, the search engines might place those web pages higher in the search index. This is how the search engines decide what pages should be listed first. They count the references from the joker collectors to the webpages. Crazy no?)

I'm also very interested in education for kids.  For instance, I really like the elementary science curriculum of Science4Us, the writing instruction online of Time4Writing, and help with analogies instruction at SpellingCity.

Jokers - Putting a bit of the collection online


This is one of the first pages in my albums of jokers. I've noticed other collections on the web. I thought I'd try scanning a few pages and putting them up.
I would guess that I have about a thousand distinct jokers.

Update Feb 2018 - As I look back at this original post on my joker website, I'm a little underwhelmed.  The image is upside down and the page is collection of cartoon themed jokers. Not my favorite types.

My subsequent post, also written in January of 2009,  was about organizing jokers and learning about them was a little more far-reaching and eloquent.

So I'll just add this post script to this original post.

I started collecting jokers when I was a working magician in high school. It had something to do with a trick whose climax was a reveal of many different cards now transformed into jokers and with different backs. It was a store-bought trick and I was disappointed in the selection of jokers.  The year was probably 1974.

I've been collecting on and off since then. I put some in photo albums before I graduated from high school in 1976. And then I put the albums on the shelf where they most sat untouched for many decades.  My interest grew in recent years starting with this post in January of 2009, updated in Feb, 2017

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Joker Pictures for use in system

Here's a whole set that I got from Poland:














Bicycle Fireflies



Cards from the Gallaria Mall

























Wild West by JAMM PAKD




Texan 45-R Poker Cards










Fournier Jokers, Spain. Circa 1960s