I finally found my copy of this deck; sure enough, it was in the last place I looked.
My copy comes without 13-spots, oddly enough. The back is one I don't recognize,
nor is it in the database of Bicycle backs.
Tax stamps are 2-cent stamps, but printed over them is lettering reading as follows:
"10-4-1917 7 CENTS USP(C)Co" (the C in the last line is on a missing portion
of the stamp, but can be reasonably inferred.) Unsure why two stamps were
necessary; any ideas?
AoS code reads "1 17", while the Joker reads "X 167". If the Joker code is the
same as the customary AoS code, this also points to a 1917 date for this deck.
Tom hit the nail on the head about the stamps - the same applied to two-deck sets. The second-stamp requirement for a deck over fifty-three cards did NOT include the extra cards, ad cards, or the jokers. Bridge sets also had two stamps, one for each deck, usually found on the deck's cellophane or vellum wrapping.
The overprint was a cost-saving measure - the US Government had raised the deck tax to seven cents a pack in 1917 but didn't want to waste all the older stamps with the lower rate on them, so they did those overprints to indicate that the full tax at the new rate was paid, but used the old stamps rather than destroy them.
Tom pointed out to me that for "non-modern" decks, if the AoS code is another other than a letter followed by four numbers, it wasn't necessarily a date code. As far as the Joker code, I couldn't tell you, since most jokers I've run into don't have such codes - it's possible that the AoS code was placed on the joker instead for this deck, perhaps having to do with the larger deck size. Imagine a slightly larger-than-standard uncut sheet with these cards on it - it's not inconceivable that the Joker would have ended up on this sheet where the AoS would normally have gone if this was a regular 52-card deck. Another more-likely possibility is that the two codes were used for this deck because the extra cards were printed on a different sheet that bore enough of these extra cards for several decks - maybe the codes were used to match up sheets with extra cards.
If you should get into modern decks, you'll notice the AoS codes have changed dramatically. These days, the "letter plus four numbers" has been supplemented with a four-digit prefix. The first two digits are the week of the year the deck was made, while the next two digits are the last two digits of that year. It's a really convenient method for tracking the age of a deck, but unfortunately most custom decks of playing cards don't use AoS date codes at all, so it will only help with decks that are either standard or created by USPC for their own uses, such as the Club 808 decks and their other custom models that weren't ordered by a third party.
However, that overprint on the tax stamp indicates it was taxed at the 1917 rate - a rate which only lasted until 1919, when it increased by another penny. So your deck is the same general age as the 7-cent tax - not older than 1917, not younger than 1919.
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