Latin Decks are Different

Two of my friends recently bought decks for me from their travels. These decks were both bought in Latin countries (Spain and Italy) so they are not American-style decks. For those of you who don't know, American decks are 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 from Sicily.  How are Latin decks different? Well, let's look.

The Suits, Example: 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

 
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

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.

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! So it only has 48 cards.

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. The One of Coins, like our ace of spades, doubles as a trademark card.  The four Spanish suits:  Los Oros (Coins/Gold), Copas (Cups), Espadas (Swords), y Bastos (Clubs)

Ones of Coins, Swords, Clubs, and Cups

The Trademark in the Spanish Deck

is the One of Coins card

Here are the four ones from the Sicilian Italian deck of cards

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)

Quick PS. In looking through my archives, I found another Spanish deck. Here it is. First the one and two of swords with the  three sword face cards noticing again, it's knave knight, and king.

Three Spanish sword face cards:
knave knight, and king.

Here's the face cards and one through four of coins. Notice again that the one of coins, like our ace of spades, doubles as a trademark card.

And here is the two of each of the four Spanish suits: swords, cups, clubs, and coins. Los Oros (Coins/Gold), Copas (Cups), Espadas (Swords), y Bastos (Clubs)

There is a third broad category of European decks of cards: the German decks.  German-suited playing cards are  common in many parts of Central Europe. The packs are made up of 32- or 36-card packs with 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 dates back to around 1450 and influenced the design of the now international French suit system of Clubs, Spades, Hearts and Diamonds. 

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,

More Transformation Decks - Chasing Hochman's List

If you don't know what a transformation deck is, jump over to my article explaining transformation decks.

Transformation Decks Build the Pips into an Image

At the most recent 52 Plus Joker Conference in Charlotte NC, I first heard about the idea of a Completist Collector. Matt Schacht used the expression in his talk where he self-identified as a Completist Collector meaning (as I understand it), a collector who likes having a defined finite list of items which he tries to collect all of. As an example in his case, he focused on The Souvenir Decks mentioned in Hochman Chapter 25. 

So I looked at the Transformation decks mentioned by Hochman in Chapter 18 and if I count the modern reproductions (which is as cheesy as can be), I have 6 out of the 15 that Hochman mentions. Here's the status of my collection in completing a collection of the 15 trans decks that Hochman lists. 

Hochman Transformation Decks - Chapter 18					V 11-14-2025
	Year	Deck	Mine	Publisher	Comments	Reprints
T1	1833	BARTLETT	2023 reprint	Caleb Bartlett, NY,	Identical to three decks produced Europe ~15 years earlier, known as Beatrice or Fracas,	2023
T2	1860	Samuel Hart		Samuel Hart & Co.,	copied from Braun and Schneider, Munich, Germany ten years earlier
T2a	1860	Samuel Hart		Samuel Hart & Co.,	minor changes
T3	1876	Eclipse Comic	deck, 52+J	F.H. Lowerre, NY,	Centennial deck, first original transformation deck to be published in USA
T4	1879	Tiffany Harlequin	reprint	Tiffany & Company, NY,	The most artistic of American transformation decks, designed by C.E. Carryl	1974
T5	1883	Murphy Varnish		Murphy Varnish Co	Transformation and advertising deck
T6	1888	Harlequin Insert		Kinney Tobacco Co	Cards individually found in Sweet Caporal cigarette packs
T7	1889	Harlequin Insert		Kinney Tobacco Co	Collecting all 53 insert cards earned a full size transformation deck (see T8)
T8	1889	Harlequin Insert		Kinney Tobacco Co	first American transformation deck to include courts with transformed pip designs
T9	1895	Hustling Joe I,		USPC	a clever pseduo transformation deck- see pics
T10	1895	Hustling Joe I,	reprint	USPC	Fixed colored background problem which made deck poor for games	reprint
T11	1895	Vanity Fair	deck, 52+J	USPC	Transformation deck. Courts are clever & comical but not transofrmed
T12	1896	Y Witches Fortune-Telling	deck, 52+J	USPC	More of a fortune-telling deck but included...
T13	1905	Funny Sport		Contiental PC Co, NY	Pips had comical faces, every card had a motto or statement
T14	1977	Sutherland-Brown		Laura Sutherland	Transformation-like

If you don't know anything about Transformation decks, click ASAP to my introductory article about Transformation decks.  If you do understand the concept, then stick around as I move away from the Hochman completist idea and provide some updates on my transformation deck collecting...

Here's descriptions of three of my transformation decks (others are covered in my other transformation deck article): 

• Vanity Fair Transformation Deck of 1895.
  
• Fronmann and Bunte or Jeanne Hachette 1870 Transformation Deck 
• Circus Transformation Deck by F. Robert Schick, 1988

Vanity Fair Transformation Deck of 1895. This is the first transformation deck by USPC and it is very well done. Here's a few pip cards.

The Five Spades - all in their traditional spot - are
cleverly integrated with five images

The Two of Spades from the 1895
Vanity Fair Transformation Deck 

The Three of Spades from an 1895 Transformation Deck 
Transformation Decks Started in Germany in the early 1800s

The royal cards are not transformed but they are original and humorous. The joker is a devil. A complete set of photographs of the deck is available on the World of Playing Cards (out of England) or on the World Wide Playing Card Museum website (out of Russia by Alexander Sukhorukov).

Vanity Fair Transformation Deck of 1895: Joker, Ace, and Back

Vanity Fair Transformation Deck of 1895 - Humorous Royal Cards

I also recently acquired the Fronmann and Bunte or Jeanne Hachette 1870 Transformation deck published by B.P. Grimaud.  A reproduction deck was printed in 1976 by J. Chr. Sorensen of Copenhagen of a transformation pack. Here's information about it on The World of Playing Cards on Jeanne Hachette and the WWPCM on Jeanne Hachette.  

Jeanne Hachette 1870 Transformation Deck

Jeanne Hachette 1870 Transformation deck - Ten of Hearts

Eight of Hearts - Jeanne Hachette 1870 Transformation deck

Jeanne Hachette 1870 Transformation deck: Ace, Two, or Three of Clubs

Here's a scan (thanks Peter) from Albert Field's Transformation Playing Cards about the Fronmann and Bunte or Jeanne Hachette 1870 original and modern Transformation decks.  (thanks Peter)

The Circus Transformation Deck was designed by F. Robert Schick. When he died in 1988, his widow worked with Carti Mundi to get the deck published in 1000 copies. My example is 792 and is one of my rare unopened decks.

Here are a few card images of the The Circus Transformation Deck was designed by F. Robert Schick with image credit going to The World of Playing Cards (since my deck remains sealed)

The Jokers of the
The Circus Transformation Deck 
by F. Robert Schick1989

Comng soon - my write up of the Inky Dinky, Bag of Bones, transformation playing card deck which just arrived this week.

Another transformation deck of note (ie, not a modern reproduction) that I own is the the Eclipse Comic Playing Cards Deck. It is described in my previous article on transformation decks. There are also some super interesting modern transformation decks by Peter Wood and by Elaine Lewis. I also, as mentioned in the table above, have some modern reproductions of the best historical transformation decks. Enjoy!

Archer Jokers: A subsection of the Fighting Jokers

In the fighter section, there are sections for fighters with swords (and other or no weapons), fighters with swords protecting money bags, fighters with halbards (long poles which have sharp points and a hook for pulling horsemen off their horses,  archers (this article), and fighters with guns. 

 I love the archer on the flying horse below. But I fear that I have double-counted him since this joker also appears on the fantasy horse section. It's on the list of items to fix but for the moment, pardon my double counting..

My Congress matching joker of Diana with a bow and arrow is also in the archery subsection of the fighter section.  I keep the joker with the deck which is why there is only a photocopy of her in the joker album.  The leather box says 1899 but the deck might be from 1903.

Here's the archers all together. Many of the archers came in a deck where the other joker had a different weapon. I keep the sets together and put them here.

 This post is an effort to update my online record of the fighters. Note that if the fighter has both a sword and halbard, they go in the halbard sectiion. And right now, fighters with clubs or wrestlers are in with the swords. 

Here is the whole suite of articles about jokers who are fighters.

Fighters with swords. Or spears, daggers, clubs, or no weapons
Money bags jokers. ie Fighters with swords and bags of money
Fighters with halberds (poles with sharp points, an axe blade, and a hook for pulling horsemen off their horse)
Archers and pairs of fighters where one is an archer - THIS article
Fighters with guns. 

Halberd Holding Jokers

 Halberds: A note of explanation:

A halberd is a versatile, two-handed polearm consisting of an axe blade, a spike, and a hook on a long shaft. It was a prominent weapon for European infantry from the 14th to 16th centuries, used for its ability to fight armored cavalry, hack, thrust, and dismount riders. Later, it evolved into a ceremonial weapon for guards.

Here is the whole suite of articles about jokers who are fighters.

Fighters with swords. Or spears, daggers, clubs, or no weapons
Money bags jokers. ie Fighters with swords and bags of money
Fighters with halberds   - THIS article
Archers and pairs of fighters where one is an archer
Fighters with guns.