Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Joker and Card Sites & Resources

Here is a directory of some resources for joker and card collecting. Clubs, books, stores, collectors, designers, publishers, and other resources for joker collectors. It's an ambitious idea which tilts towards those that I find useful or interesting. For suggestions, just put it in a comment.  

A Joker Collection, organized by themes. Amused by Jokers Am I dot com. This is my site and l list it in case someone takes this listing and puts it somewhere else. www.AmusedByJokersAmI.com

Facebook Groups
Facebook Closed Group on Joker Collecting. Run by Joop and Gejus.  Very active. Approaching 500 members in late 2020. Really really fun.
Pre 1950s Cards - Facebook Card Collectors 
 Joker Hunters - Alan Brunt's Facebook Group.  More trading oriented
Fake counterfeit cards, Facebook Group recognizing and trying to define and fight the illegal sale of copyrighted materials.


Card Groups & Major Directories
52 Cards Plus Jokers - Lee Asher, President - annual conference in Oct.  $25 / year!!!
52 Plus Jokers


International Playing Card Society - I-P-C-S.org  £49.00 GBP

United Cardists -  a forum promoted by @pipchickadee PipChick  Anyone can vote.
DXPO - more about this later, it's fantastic!
Playing Card Decks.com -- Useful. Example: How cards are made and Intro to Cards

Books and Catalogs - Key Resources
#1. Hochman Encyclopedia of American Playing Cards by Tom & Judy Dawson. If you don’t have a copy, get one. Maybe two in case you lose one and they go out of print. It is a better resource than us collectors deserve and I am very grateful that it exists. There's also a price guide but I haven't seen it.
Paper Empires Vol I by Jason McKinstry. C 2019. It looks broadly at the early card makers detailing an extraordinary amount about them.
I've heard talk of A Fournier and Segeth catalogue and book. I'm looking for them
An inventory of Bicycle Decks - Bicycle Cards.org by Joseph Piersonabout the history of Bicycle Playing Cards produced by the Russell and Morgan and the United States Playing Card Company.


Museum Level Playing Card Collections 
The Cary Playing Card Collection at Beineke Library, Yale University. (I own a copy of the catalog and was an undergraduate there when the collection was put on public display in 1979) but there is no public display.
le Musée Français de la Carte à Jouer - French playing card museum in the SW Paris suburb Issy-les-Moulineaux
Museum of the Playing Card of Turnhout in Turnhout Belgium (not far from Antwerp or Brussels) 
Bibliothèque Nationale de France (the Grimaud family collections) but it is not on display 
Deutsches Spielkartenmuseum of Leinfelden (extraordinary collections but no place to show them).
IPCS maintains a more comprehensive list of playing card museums
 

Where to shop: Market Places
Ebay !
RubyLane
Etsy
Cartorama (German)


Where I shop:  Card Publishers and Distributors
Midnight Cards - My favorite! Randy Butterfield did me a favor once for which I am grateful! Thanks.
PlayingCardDecks.com - I might spend the most here
Ellusionist.com- great decks
ElephantPlayingCards.com  EPC    Ben Jones
Peter Woods - published by NewtsGames.com - UK 
Art of Play
PlayingCardDecks.com - I've probably spent more here than anywhere except Ebay
Empire of Kings and Queens - Where he wonders what is the message from cards
Kardify - card and magic vendor
Collectable Playing Cards Vendor
Games et al - English Gallery of old playing cards and board games.
Gamblers General Store - 
Penguin Magic and Cards - 
Games et al - English


Joker Collections - I would like to have the time to describe each of the joker collection sites talking about what's interesting and strong and unique about each one. Of course, I will one day but it's a question of time....I'm also interested in profiling the joker collectors. What sorts of people collect jokers?
Legend
Fournier
Cartamundi

https://www.collectorplayingcards.com/

https://cartorama.de
http://www.epcs.org
http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/dbs/goslingcards.shtml
52plusjoker.org%20club
http://a_pollett.tripod.com/
https://www.altacarta.com/english/index.html  info@altacart.com 
Dot Pattern  

Instagram & Pinterest accounts -list?
Ie
instagram.com/collectorplayingcards

Online Resources on Cards...
Final Answers by Gerard P Michon. It has a lot of card history. Example: "The Mameluke deck (c. 1370)  begat the modern English packs for Bridge and Poker."  and that Joan of Arc lives on in French decks as the Queen of Spades. Also, "The oldest full 52-card deck was identified 1983 .  Those large oval cards were manufactured in Flanders between 1470 and 1479  (probably in Lille, modern-day France)  from paper made before 1450.  The deck has three figures  (Kings, Queens, Knaves)  all hand-painted in three-quarter profiles.  The four suits have a  hunting  theme:
  • Red hunting  horns.
  • Blue hound  tethers.
  • Blue game  nooses.
  • Red dog  collars.
Also, Gerard explains the emergence of the modern joker this way: "In the old game of  Jucker  from  Alsace,  the two most powerful cards are two jacks of the same color  (called  Juker,  regionally, or  Bauer  in German).  When that game was exported to the United States, its name was distorted to  Euchre  and  Bauer  became  Bower  (both spellings approximate the German pronunciations).  The game was originally played with a  deck of 24 cards  (it still is).  An American innovation was to introduce one extra card, called  best bower  that would take either bower...  This became known as  the Jucker card.  The  joker  was born."
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