My Number of Jokers

 

VocabularySpellingCity Joker

Does anyone really care about personal metrics?  I don't think anybody really cares about your weight, bank balance, IQ, test scores, or your GPA.  Or your speed on the 100 yard dash. Or how many pushups you can do.   

With that said, I'd like to share one of my numbers: 11,634 (on May 6th, 2025).  That's my number of how many different jokers I have, I just counted. It's a ton of work to count the entire collection. And boring too.

Notice that the collection grew a lot in the last eight year. Nothing like lots of spare time, some visits to different collectors, a few online 52Plus auctions, two 52Plus Conferences, easy access to eEbay, lots of travel, and ... woops, lots of new jokers.

Background:
I had ...                    7,346 different jokers as of 2/2021: 

                                5,392 on 12/2019: 

                                3,231 on 9/18:

                                2,039 on 6/2017. 
And I think I had about 500 hundred when I graduated from high school in 1976.

 Of course, my collections keeps growing so the number is a moving target.  A few weeks before, my number was smaller. In a few weeks, it could be larger.

Sometimes, to my chagrin, I discover duplicate jokers which means that I've counted one joker twice so then, when I redo the numbers,  it goes down 😥.

To be clear. I have many many more jokers than that because I have many duplicate jokers.  I only consider the joker side: I don't generally care about the backside of the joker.  

A more complicated question is what constitutes a joker different than another. The question is subtle when the difference is just the printing, slight differences in card size, tiny control numbers on the cards, and so on. I tend not to count slight differences in the printing or size:  I don’t want looking at my jokers to appear like dozens of nearly identical cards with the differences feeling like an eye tests. If I can't see the difference between the two cards without a magnifying glass, I won't count it as different. 

I generally don't consider different printing control numbers to count as differences with the exception of the Western Publishing Topsy jokers  since the fine print has the back name for each joker and it’s in pretty large type.

I had planned to stop general collecting at ten thousand. But I'm still enjoying it so I'll continue but I'm showing some restraint.

It amused me that I shot through my target number without even noticing. But it is time for me to start specializing and to stem my general purpose joker buying.

Here, btw, is a meme that has made the rounds in the card collecting world. I like since it combines my interest in language and playing cards.

What are these days my specific areas of interest in card collecting?

• Early American jokers - From 1870 until about 1925.
• Congress decks with Matching Jokers
• Jokers on the Joker Poster by USPCC.
• Advertising jokers from the start of the 1900s. 
• Decks from 1870 to 1920 that focus on African Americans, Native Americans, and Chinese Americans.

GoNoodle Playing Care Joker

While there are many categories of jokers,  my favorite category are the topsy-turvy (two headed)  jokers. T 

Topsy Turvy Jokers - There is no upside down!

 .  A topsy turvy jokers are those that are, like so many playing cards, symmetrical along the X axis.  Or more simply, they are the same upside down as right side up. Or there is no way for them to be upside down.  Here's 71 of them as they appear in my joker album.

However, this one is not symmetrical so it doesn't really count as a topsy.

SpellingCity Joker 

If you've read this far, you are probably interested in the mechanics of joker collecting, my system for organizing jokers, and the resources available to help joker and playing card collectors.

Also, not to missed, info on the history of the playing card joker!