About ME - Jesters, much like Jokers

About Me; My name is John (John Edelson). I collect jokers and have done so, off and on, since I was in high school in the early to mid 1970s. I live in South Florida. I have well over 10,000 different jokers. I am a "general" collector of jokers who only started specializing in 2023. I have focused on the half a dozen candidates for what was the first joker ever. I also have specialities including all old American jokers (pre 1900 and pre 1930), Matching Congress Jokers and Decks, Fairy Moon Jokers, and Jokers from the USPCC Joker Poster.

John Edelson, Joker Collector

My contribution to modern joker collection has been developing and popularizing a joker organization system, a taxonomy for collectors.  I first articulated my joker organizing system in March 2017.  

 Think about it, how to organize hundreds or thousands of jokers so that at a glance, I know where to check to see if I have a joker? Color organization doesn't work, neither does alphabetical order or by country or publisher since that requires enormous memorizing. So I developed a thematic visual organizational system for jokers.  It's a work in progress.

Here's some of my favorite jokers (a very hard selection to make!).

Some Favorite Jokers
My main contribution to the joker community:
 the creation of a taxonomy of jokers.  

 

More about me: I  exercise and play a lot of table tennis. I collect vintage educational technology. I retired in 2023 from 20 years plus in educational software (founder of Time4Learning and SpellingCity) and before that, from careers in consulting, tech, and video game development. I produced a video game released in 1997 called Croc, Legend of the Gobbos. It was the first free-roaming 3D platformer on the Playstation and tons of fun. It was republished for the Playstation 5 and other platforms in 2025!!!  I vote not just my narrow self-interest but for the good of the country and world.  I don't buy cheap liquor. I mostly write in short declarative sentences.  I learned these values from my parents.

 I collect playing card jokers. I limit it to decks of cards and jokers and I avoid related ephemera.  I stay away from clowns, scary or otherwise. I do have two  items related to my cards and that is enough. One, there is this little plastic jester figurine that I bought in Paris.

Jester - Joker Model

And there is this harlequin or jester mask, bought in Italy. It is related to  the jokers with masks section of my collection.  

Jester Mask

Some people ask me if anyone reads this blog.  If you are reading this blog, you know the answer. I will admit that I was for many years the primary reader of this blog. I like writing it, I like reading it, and I like revising it. And when I don't, I don't.  BTW, this website is now (2024)  getting around a thousand page views a day. Every day. Weird?   I think it's strange but it pleases me.
 

The picture below  has me, the joker collector!  Enjoy this rare glimpse of the mad genius! I was in Prague in 2016 when I met this jester. I was 58.

John (collector) with a Jester, Eastern Europe. Oct 2016

These inlaid wood boxes are from the south of Spain. The bottom one was bought in the late 1980s. I have new one, not yet pictured, bought in November 2016.

Joker Box - Inlaid Wood - Southern Spain

I met a jester who was behaving himself so I took his picture.  He was in Eastern Europe. Specifically, Prague in the Czech Republic.  October 2016.

A Jester in Prague, Czech Republic

Joker Inlaid Box from the South of Spain

Oops, there I am again. I was dared to get photographed with these two famous characters who have been recently made into fluffy stuffed toys. One is the HangMouse featured on VocabularySpellingCity.  The other is Pinkerton Sciefus, or Pinky or Sciefus for short, who is a featured character in Science4Us.  They appear on jokers that I designed!

John with the HangMouse & Sciefus
Clowning Around - What a Joker!

 

And here I am again. First, in costume as Batman with Catwomen at Dillard Elementary Literacy Night. Same night, I'm also with Harley Quinn.