Picked up a nifty bridge size advertising deck today for Townsend West dairy products.  AoS is marked 1942, bridge pts card has copyright 1935, so that sounds about right.

This is probably half of my (entire!) collection.  I realize you can't see much in these photos, but I plan to feature some of my better decks with individual posts in the future.  If you see any decks you want more info on, let me know.

Those are some really nice decks.  The Crooked Deck brings back a LOT of memories - I used to play with them as a kid!  The Enardoe deck - that's a trick deck, right?  I know the DeLand Automatic deck is!

If I'm not mistaken, the DeLand deck eventually became the intellectual property of S.S. Adams Novelties, and from there I think it went to Magic Makers or to USPC - there are some newer printings of that deck still around today with USPC deck seals on them.  Most recent DeLand deck I've ever held in my hands was from 1990 but I've seen them for sale as new product within the last few years, and also in different DeLand designs.  They all followed the same basic theme - a extreme version of a Gambler's Deck.

A Gambler's Deck is stripped, stacked and marked to allow you to know the top AND bottom cards of the deck (there are other markings, but they're secondary, like the mark that tells you if it's an Ace or the mark that tells you what color it is, etc.).  The DeLand decks usually had markings that told you not just the top and bottom cards, but the location of ANY given card in the deck, when the deck was in stack order.  Looking at the back of the top card, you could count down the exact number of cards needed to find any card desired.

There was a serious drawback with all that utility, however.  It was not difficult at all to spot the changes from one card back to the next, there were so many of them.  A DeLand deck of this type would ALWAYS fail a riffle test performed by anyone but the legally blind...in which case the chances were about fifty-fifty of failure!

Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane!

I Picked up these Empress Back 1905 Empire Playing cards  by A. Dougherty last week.

Gorgeous.  A deck like this was a crooked gambler's dream when they were first printed!  The design is intricate enough to allow for a concealed marking system to be added after the fact by someone with the right shade of ink!

I Picked up these Empress Back 1905 Empire Playing cards  by A. Dougherty last week.

This a pretty scarce deck - not often seen.

Both of my DeLands are S.S. Adams.  They both show a 1913 T.L. DeLand copyright but must've been produced after 1918.

Yeah, those Delands are cool, but there is almost too much going on with them.  I had a similar deck in the 90's that my friends and i played with. Was it call Svengali? Haven't thought abought that in years.

Svengali decks are a different animal!  They're quite simple, in fact - every other card is the same suit & value and is cut slightly shorter than the rest of the deck.  You can use such a deck for a number of effects, not the least of which being a card force (making the spectator pick the card of your choice but making it seem like a random selection).

You may have had one of the many variants of the DeLand deck.

Quote from: Don Boyer on February 23, 2014, 06:39:47 PM

Quote from: athomas16 on February 23, 2014, 09:46:36 AM

Yeah, those Delands are cool, but there is almost too much going on with them.  I had a similar deck in the 90's that my friends and i played with. Was it call Svengali? Haven't thought abought that in years.

Svengali decks are a different animal!  They're quite simple, in fact - every other card is the same suit & value and is cut slightly shorter than the rest of the deck.  You can use such a deck for a number of effects, not the least of which being a card force (making the spectator pick the card of your choice but making it seem like a random selection).

You may have had one of the many variants of the DeLand deck.

Yes, of course you are right.  My Svengali deck featured the 2 of Hearts.  Somehow we also had a 90's era DeLand.

Poked around on the history of the deck and the man.  In addition to working as a clerk at the US Mint in Philadelphia, Theodore L. DeLand was actively creating retail magic tricks from 1906 to 1915, creating nearly 100 tricks and apparently sparking a craze for packet tricks in the process.  The Mysto Magic Company bought the manufacturing rights to his works in 1911, followed by SS Adams in 1918.  DeLand died in an insane asylum in Norristown, PA in 1931.  Magic Makers bought SS Adams in 2009.
http://www.geniimagazine.com/magicpedia/Theodore_DeLand

The current publisher of Genii, Richard Kaufman, has been working on a biography of the man for over a dozen years but doesn't appear to have completed it yet - he was likely inspired to write it  because DeLand's tricks got him started in magic in the first place, according to his biography on MagicPedia.
http://www.geniimagazine.com/magicpedia/Richard_Kaufman

Interesting find: this page displays an Ace of Spades for the DeLand deck - am I mistaken or does that look a lot like an Arrco AoS?  I'm guessing that Arrco was printing this for a good while, which USPC took over when they bought Arrco in '87, and they opted to leave the same design in place.
http://magicmakersinc.com/learndeland/ (image is at bottom of page)

The deck is still available - even in red, which I've never seen before.  The only sell to the trade, however - you'd have to order it through a magic shop.
http://www.magicmakersinc.com/p-569-delands-marked-deck-ss-adams.aspx

A brief history of the deck's changing title: http://www.geniimagazine.com/magicpedia/Dollar_Deck

SS Adams makes a Svengali deck with a similar box design, which is probably what led you to mix the two decks.  It's also available in blue and red.
http://www.magicmakersinc.com/p-570-amazing-svengali-deck-ss-adams.aspx

A final note of interest to vintage/antique card collectors: apparently DeLand created a deck similar to his "Automatic/Dollar" deck called the Wonder Deck which allows a magician to know the position of any given card in a pack.  I'm guessing it was an improvement - supposedly due to pressure from casino owners (and probably some underground casino owners at that!), he pulled the deck from the market, destroyed the plates and all remaining copies of it he had in stock.  Wouldn't that be a feather in a collector's cap, finding that exceptionally-rare magic deck...
http://www.geniimagazine.com/magicpedia/Wonder_Deck

I think I've hogged this topic enough!  If we should continue this, we can branch these posts off into a new topic.

I found them on eBay and I think I got a pretty good deal . The seller had several other auctions listed and they were very knowledgable about what they were selling, so I am guessing they may even be affiliated with this forum. Anyway, I was following several other auctions ending around the same time that I was outbid on; including an 1850 dougherty deck that skyrocketed in the last few hours, and this was the last one. I am interested in learning more about the deck, but I'm not going to research too much until my Hochman Encyclopedia and supplement arrives later this week (I finally sprung the money for them). Next up, a 52+ joker membership, but lets not be too hasty.

Can't be too hasty. Carpe diem!

Just got this WWI Allied Armies deck in the mail today. I am very pleased with it, more so than I expected when I purchased it.

Jackson - a beauty!

Look what the mailman brought me on Friday - Boudoirs a narrow brand by Chas. Goodall & Sons in London with neat backs produced from maybe 1910 to 1925. These were sold in Canada [a big market for Goodall] and have a Canadian 15 cents war tax stamp from about 1920. Especially like the Art Deco back. Still sealed in wrappers.

That's a fantastic pair of decks.  I wonder why we no longer see such nice slipcover boxes anymore?  Closest to it I've seen was the box for the Bicycle Prestige plastic cards, but it's a pale shadow of this.

52+Joker auction winner

1894 Midwinter Fair Deck
sorry pics are not the best-phone camera

The back is what got me. I just really liked it for some reason.


1 side of tuck with 2 King of Hearts- Anybody know why there are 2?


Other side of tuck, Aces, and Bear "Joker"


A few more cards


great deck. All complete. Cards for most part are in great shape. Tuck is pretty worn out(after 120 years I'd be worn out to)
Love the deck, and glad I was able to help out the club as well.

The court cards of Russell & Morgan PTG co decks are my preferred among all the other antique decks. I think the width and the size of the hearts, clubs and spades are perfect, colours are really beautiful and the representations of the jacks, queens and kings are also magnificent and very detailed.

I also like a lot the antique 32 card decks. There are fewer cards in the box but the holding in hand is very pleasant and I find that the antique models with joker are just fascinating.

The first pictured deck is a Sportsman's #202, introduced in 1881, by Russell, Morgan & Co. This is the first issue with the nice and picturesque Ace of spades and a pinkish red Pheasant back.

The two others, introduced in 1888 with the name Cabinet #707 was made and packed with 32 standard cards and four special progressive euchre cards.
These copies have a blue back and one represents binoculars. The other baby back was used for another brand made by Russell&Morgan: the Army and Navy #303.