Latin Decks are Different

Two of my friends recently bought decks for me on their travels. These decks were both bought in Latin countries (Spain and Italy) so they are not American-style decks which for those of you who don't know, is largely the same as British decks which are almost the same as French which is where our decks descend from.

Both of the gifted decks (and thank you both very much) were in the category that I think of as Latin decks. In this case, the decks came from Spain and Italy, specifically Sicily.  How are Latin decks different? Well, let's look.

Clubs: Like American decks, they have a suit called clubs. But their clubs look like real clubs, like the sort of club a Fred Flintstone might have used.   Here is the five of clubs and two of clubs from these decks.

A Latin-style Five and Two of Clubs

Size. You might also notice that these two decks are different sizes. And neither is exactly the same size as an American deck.  Here is the three of swords (or spades) from left to right of the Sicilian deck, an American deck, and the Spanish deck.

Suits. Here are the four suits from the Spanish deck. They have Swords (like our Spades),  Coins (like our Diamonds), Cups (like our hearts), and Clubs, which we've already looked at. These are the same suits from the Sicilian deck.  Notice any red or black suits?   

Suits of the Spanish Deck:
Swords, Coins, Cups, and Clubs

Colors: This is another big difference. Obviously (from looking at the deck), they don't have the red versus black suits.  But from looking at it, I could maybe discern a split based on the amount of red or shapes. So I turned to AI to check and was assured that they do NOT have anything comparable to the red vs black suit of our American (British/French) decks.

Face Cards / Royalty. American decks have a well-established court of a jack, a queen, and a king.  The Spanish deck has a Knave (Fante in Italian, Sota in Spanish),  Knight (Cavallo in Italian, Caballo in Spanish), and a  King (Rey/Re).   And NO Queen!

 

The Six Highest Club Cards
in the Spanish deck

 

In the picture above, I showed the six highest cards in the Spanish deck.  If you look at the clubs, you'll

notice that I have the seven, the eight, and the nine.  No ten!  Yes, that's right, this deck has no tens!

Trademark card. In American decks, the ace of spades is traditionally very ornate.  This descended from England where the stamp tax was placed on the ace of spades to show that the tax had been paid. In the Latin decks, it's the one of coins that is the most ornate card in the deck.  (Turning to AI). The one of coins in Latin decks often features a special, ornate design for two main reasons: as a canvas for the printer's mark or tax stamp, and to highlight its symbolic significance as a representation of material abundance and the element of Earth.  Here are the two ornate ones of coins.

The Most Ornate Cards - Trademarks

Here are the four ones from the Spanish and Sicilian decks so you can see how the one of coins got the most elaborate treatment.

Ones of Coins, Swords, Clubs, and Cups

The Trademark is one the Coins card

Spanish Deck

Ones of Coins, Swords, Clubs, and Cups

The Trademark is one the Coins card

Sicilian Deck

Number of Cards. Here are six most valuable cup cards in the Sicilian deck.  There's the king, knight, and knave. And the highest number card is a seven.  So they have only ten cards in each suit as opposed to the thirteen cards in an American deck. So the Sicilian deck has only 40 cards in it.

Top Six Cup Cards in the Sicilian Deck

The Spanish deck has 50 cards.  There are 12 cards in each suit (remember, no Tens) plus this deck has two jokers.

Spanish Jokers and Back

Sicilian Box
(The Spanish deck did not have a box)

There is a third broad category of European decks of cards: the German decks.  German-suited playing cards are a very common style of traditional playing card used in many parts of Central Europe characterised by 32- or 36-card packs with the suits of Acorns (Eichel or Kreuz), Leaves (Grün, Blatt, Laub, Pik or Gras), Hearts (Herz or Rot) and Bells (Schelle, Schell or Bolle). The German suit system is one of the oldest, becoming standard around 1450 and, a few decades later, influencing the design of the now international French suit system of Clubs, Spades, Hearts and Diamonds.   (Thanks to Wikipedia for this party).

No more to see here, want to go look at the animal subsections of the joker collection?

1. Ensemble Animal combinations (cats AND dogs)



Animals: Flyers - Bee Boy

1. Cats  or  Dogs . Felines, Canines. And a big cat subsection! 
2. Flyers:  Birds, Owls, Bees,  Butterflies  & Dragons . With a rooster & chicken subsubsection!
3. Horses , zebras, donkeys, giraffes. Equestrian!
1. Fantasy horses: centaurs, unicorns, Pegasuses
   
4. Monkeys, bears, and other sapiens (yes, missing links jokers go here).  Panda Bears are a subsection.
5. Animals with antlers, horns, and tusks
6. Varmints - the small wild animals
7. Reptiles, amphibians, sea creatures, mermaids, shell fish,