Questionable Date codes

[EndZoneLayer]

To whomever knows the answer:

I have recently rediscovered many cases of playing cards I had bought many years back of various types.  Some of the cards have date codes that don't match the usual pattern of a letter followed by 4 numbers.  Also some have letter codes that don't match the charts online.  Maybe someone knows the origins of these?

Bicycle Rider back code "4506"  no letters

Torpedo (Aviator) Plastic coated code "4306"  no letters

Tally Ho fan back code "B2301"  On this one, the box design is slightly different than the other tally hos I've had. It has a long flap and bar code on the opposite side.

Any insight on this issue would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Don Boyer]

The date codes are a rule of thumb - but unfortunately are not universally accurate for all releases.

The tuck with the longer flap would be an older deck - long flaps were the standard until some time in the early 1970s or so.

Torpedo brand was one of several brands (Mohawk, Caravan, etc.) that USPC would use to literally shove whatever leftover decks they had lying around into the box and sell it off cheap.  Often this was done when a different, more mainstream brand was taken out of production and they had more decks lying around than boxes to put them in.  In the latter years of many of those "generic" brands, Aviators became the default deck, despite having the Aviator Ace of Spades and Jokers, likely because it was the cheapest modern deck USPC sold at the time.