Quote from: Victory52 on August 18, 2015, 03:12:18 AM

Hello, my first "real" post, and the deck that prompted me to join the forum.  I am trying to understand how to date this particular deck, but the information I found researching today is a bit confusing.  The box states N.Y. Consolidated and supposedly this dates the deck to pre-1930.  But the tax stamp dates it between 1940-1965.  The Consolidated-Dougherty cancel seems to date it to pre-1963.  These sites were my main resources:

http://playingcards.wikidot.com/articles:uspcc-history
http://dananddave.com/learn/articles/dating-playing-cards-from-1-pack-tax-stamp/

So was this old NYCCC manufactured stock that was later sold by Consolidated-Dougherty?  Or did the NYCCC brand actually exist later than 1930?  I understand that NYCCC and C-D were subsidiaries of U.S. Playing Card that operated under their own brands.  I know these questions could probably be answered by opening the pack but I'm not prepared to do that at this point since it is still fully sealed. Or does that really matter with this one?

I'm curious about value, it looks like eBay sales for seemingly equivalent decks run around $15.  Does that seem right?  I looked at Worthpoint and these were selling for around $100 back in 2011.  That's a big drop, I'm curious what happend to the market on these since then?

Any help you can offer is appreciated!

The New York Consolidated Card Company was founded in 1871, purchased by USPC in 1894 and merged into the Consolidated-Dougherty brand in 1930, under which it operated until the brand was "dissolved" and absorbed into USPC in 1962.  A. Dougherty is an even older firm, having been founded in 1848 and purchased by USPC in 1907.

Even to this day, you can buy packs of recently-made, new-stock Tally Ho playing cards that still state the manufacturer on the box face as "A. Dougherty," even though A. Dougherty as an independent corporate identity ceased to exist 85 years ago along with NYCCC.  (The copyright information on the box's bottom panel, something USPC introduced with the move to Erlanger, Kentucky in 2009, will list USPC as the manufacturer and copyright holder.  Technically the design is too old to be covered under copyright law, though it is still covered under trademark law, as long as USPC continues to keep the trademark registered.)  So I would not be surprised in the least to discover a box of Bees with the NYCCC brand which was made after the 1930 merger of the two units into Consolidated-Dougherty.

The most accurate measure of the deck's age would be the tax stamp, which in this case would place it as being made somewhere between the first use of the wide "1 PACK" tax stamp in 1940 and the abolition of the stamp tax on cards in 1965.  Someone more knowledgeable than I am might be able to narrow it further based on variations in the box design or the stamp's cancellation during that time period, but that's the best I can offer you as far as a date without the pack being opened.