Anyone ever just have old decks handed to you because people know you collect cards? This just happened to me and it came with a rather interesting story.
Just recently someone sent me a letter from London with a deck of cards called Black Pack. The letter tells the story of a man named Alasdair MacGaw (he has since passed away). According to the letter, about 25 years ago Alasdair discovered that casinos only used decks of playing cards once. Since London is multicultural he believed that black people were alienated by seeing white faces on every set of paying cards. His idea was to have a set of cards with black faces on the Kings, Queens and Jacks.
He had this set made up in a print run of only 200 and then tried selling them to all the casinos in London. However, he hit a wall because he could not afford a large enough print run to make the deck cost low enough for the casinos to buy them.
At any rate, the deck was printed by Fournier in the late 80's. It is a pinnacle sized deck and this is apparently the only one left in existence. It is marked as a first edition, has some cool design elements and is overall a nice deck. It is a smooth finish and is still rather snappy but I do not want to mess with it too much.
It probably has more sentimental value to me as it was sent to me with a personal letter describing the story behind the deck. I do not think anyone is looking for this deck or even knows it existed but I thought the forum members would enjoy it. Also, if Kickstarter were around back then, I feel like he would have been on it trying to get rich.