I bought this deck of Bee 92 Playing cards the other day and they have a back design I have not seen before. The cards were in a old Mohawk playing card box that had a one cent tax stamp. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what type of back design this is and how old these cards might be.
Hello,
Your tax stamp doesn't say "1 Cent" - it says "1 Pack." This type of stamp was in use starting in 1940 and ending when the Federal tax on playing cards was abolished in 1965.
The manufacturing codes beginning with "E," such as the one on your Ace of Spades, were used only twice during that time period - 1943 and 1963. (Letters were, and still are, changed yearly, and not always in a straightforward, alphabetical pattern.)
It's not surprising to find decks other than "Mohawk" in the Mohawk tuck box - Mohawk was one of the "catch-all" brands used by USPC to get rid of old stock, things they didn't have appropriate boxes for, off-brands that were discontinued, etc.; two other such brands I personally know of are Caravan and Torpedo. In this case, it's likely that the pattern was discontinued and they simply ran out of Bee boxes with the pattern printed on the box back. Just on a guess, I'd say this would have been more likely to occur in 1963 than in 1943, but I can't say that with any certainty.
Could you show us some clearer pictures of the box and the ad cards? They may help with the dating process. While even the modern, current-issue Bee decks have "Consolidated-Dougherty" printed on the Ace of Spades, a 1943 box would list Consolidated-Dougherty as the manufacturer, and it would likely have a "C-D Co." rubber-stamped on the tax stamp to cancel it. A deck from 1963, on the other hand, would very possibly list the US Playing Card Company as the manufacturer, and the rubber-stamping to cancel the deck would read almost certainly read either "USPCC" or "USPC Co.," both of which being older abbreviations of USPC.
The reason for this is that Consolidated-Dougherty was created when USPC took two independent companies it owned, the New York Consolidated Card Co. and A. Dougherty & Co., and combined them in 1930 - but by 1962, the company was disbanded by USPC, effectively being absorbed into the parent company, and the C-D brands started being made as USPC brands. Now, the company
might have still had some old C-D boxes lying around in 1963, preferring to use them up rather than destroying them before replacing them with the new boxes listing USPC as the maker, but even if this was the case, they would very likely have been using the USPC rubber stamp to cancel the tax stamps by then.
Look at this page for some examples of tax stamps and their rubber-stamped cancellations:
http://www.cypressfilms.com/bicycle/uspc_dates/uspc_dating_codes.htmlThe back design I think is called "Worm Back" - it was produced a few times in a few different color combinations as well as with some variations by the Conjuring Arts Research Center for their series of Bee Erdnase decks they printed with USPC.
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