Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Monday, March 22, 2010

Jokers with Balloons and Men Standing Around

Trying to put text next to these jokers is a painful exercise for me since it reminds me that I have never properly curated the collection.

Where did these jokers eache come from?

What deck, what era, what manufacturer. There's so much that could and should be done with this collection.

The best observation that I can make about these jokers is that there are three old balloons and then some men.

What a joke!

Joker Collections, Playing Card Joker Websites and People

Update Oct 2018 - This site has an original taxonomy with joker categories defined and explained, this is different than most other collectors who traditionally organized by country and manufacturer.  You might want to visit parts of the collection like Clown Jokers or Mystical jokers. There's a post on the collecting taxonomy.  For community, leave me a comment or join the Facebook Joker Collecting Group

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Joker Playing Cards - PlayingJokerplayingcards.com This one page collection of jokes has four columns of 40 jokers.  So, it shows 160 jokers. It's technically put up with Tumblr but he (or she) has also taken a custom URL which makes it look nice and place well in the search engines.

Dot Pattern - The Museum of Digital Collecting
- Playing Card Jokers and Gifts - http://www.squidoo.com/playing-card-jokers  - This Squidoo-based site seems to actually been well maintained and to have a business model.  Well done!
- Dot Pattern's Joker - http://dotpattern.com/gamecard/jokers/ -

Amused by the Jokershttp://amusedbythejokers.tumblr.com / .  This site is mine. I'd always wanted to see how Tumblr works but I suspect that I'm the wrong type of brain to be there. Plus, my daughter would either die or kill me if she knew that I had a tumblr account.

52 Plus Joker   http://www.52plusjoker.org/    This site is a club with membership dues dedicated to collecting cards. it's $20/ year and includes a magazine. I think I'll join. 


Playing-Card History  http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~daf/i-p-c-s.org/faq/history.php - The history of playing-cards is shown in the following series of pages, which were written by Ron Decker. Ron was curator of the museum (currently closed) at the United States Playing Card Co and is particularly interested in tarot cards. An email is listed there: faq@i-p-c-s.org  

A digital museum of collecting http://www.dotpattern.com/gamecard/jokers/  - Another interesting site: Traditional jesters, troubadours and harlequins are displayed in the collection which continues with about 75 joker cards in the first five groups.  Fool: also called jester, a comic entertainer whose madness or imbecility, real or pretended, made him a source of amusement and gave him license to abuse and poke fun at even the most exalted of his patrons." (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1995).  This seems to be part of a digital museum of collecting, perhaps inactive.


Alta Carta The Alternative for the Playing Card Collector - http://www.altacarta.com/english/goal.html
These web pages were created for the playing card collectors who want to extend their collection. Of course people are welcome who do not collect cards, but can offer something for sale. Playing cards are offered here for trade and sale. ... "Alta Carta" just seeks contact to collectors. On the other hand in these organisations culture and research is the most essential part of the activities and what concerns the enlargement of ones personal collection is practically ignored....We do thank you for taking the time to visit these pages. We would be delighted to welcome you again. Alta Carta  January/May 2005

http://a_pollett.tripod.com/ Andy's Card Collections

iSearch - A directory site for collections

This is my second post on this topic of referencing other existing websites about jokers. http://jokercollection.blogspot.com/2009/01/joker-collections-others.html was my previous post. Neither of these posts reflects much real research.  In looking at these sites, I notice that many are out of date, not kept up, and have lots of bad links to other sites that are defunct.  

And I notice that none of the other joker-collecting websites or blogs has yet to review or list or otherwise make references this little blog.  Heh, I'm here too!    : - <  I wouldn't be so obscure if you others would list this a collection.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Joker Playing Cards

These jokers are a little art deco in style.  They're very tightly designed with efficient trim logos. Several of the jokers have commercial branding: Blue Ribbon, California Club, Remy, NC, and a commerative for the founding of City of Chicago