My Avatar - cards from the Gambit TV game show

[Daniel Wilson]

(Mods, please feel free to move this topic wherever you think best, since it's both informational and also includes an eBay auction that is not mine.)

I've had a couple of people ask me what deck the cards in my avatar picture are from.  They come from an oversized deck produced for the old TV game show Gambit, which originally ran from 1972 to 1976 on CBS.   When I purchased the deck back in 2012, I believed that it was the only one remaining in existence.  Recently, however, another (partial) deck has appeared for sale on eBay:

 http://www.ebay.com/itm/ORIGINAL-GAMBIT-TV-GAME-SHOW-DECK-OF-CARDS-RARE-FIND-TELEVISION-MEMORABILIA-/141844106468?hash=item2106914ce4:g:7igAAOSwAKxWYLN9

I am currently in the process of writing up an article detailing how I acquired my Gambit deck and all the information I have been able to obtain about it, since it was through game shows that I became interested in card collecting.   I'll be sure to send it to Judy or Don when I've finished.

[Don Boyer]

I thought that the design looked familiar!

Gonna edit the title a bit - there's also a comic book character called "Gambit" who uses playing cards as weapons, and I wouldn't want people getting them confused.

Those are HUGE - when you mentioned them, I thought you were talking about a poker-sized deck made as a promo.  These are the actual cards as used on the show - the real props.  The last picture drives that size home nicely - even jumbo-sized cards are only twice the height and width of a poker deck while these are much larger.

As a prop for a popular game show (and any show on the air for at least three years had to be popular), I'd wager that several of those decks were made, not just the one.  While they're not exactly game-played, handling by the show's cast would probably have resulted in at least some makeup and perspiration transfer (stage lights are HOT and makeup gets everywhere, especially concealer powder).  Considering that the show probably aired for 13 to 26 weeks each year, five episodes per week, they probably went through at least a dozen to two dozen decks over the course of the show.  But as these were show-specific props at a time when neither props nor playing cards generally got a lot of love from collectors (yet), most of what remained were probably destroyed shortly after the show's run ended.  (Non-specific props might have been kept for use on other shows.)  This 50-card deck probably ended up in private hands because it had two cards that were ruined during shooting or setup and the entire deck was replaced for show use.

I'm adding the images from the eBay auction, since they have a tendency to vanish over time.

[Daniel Wilson]

Don: I've added a couple of my own pictures to the bottom of this post.
Thank you for posting the auction ones already.

It's funny that you mention the mentality of "nobody would want these,
so why save them".  Game shows themselves suffered the same fate;
videotape was expensive, so tapes containing shows considered to have
no future value were wiped so the videotape could be reused.  Gambit
aired 910 episodes during its CBS run, but for decades only SIX of those
were known to have survived.  Within the past couple of years, original
host Wink Martindale discovered several episodes on Betamax tape in his
personal archive and has since posted them to YouTube.

One of those episodes suggests that at least three decks were on the set
(main game/bonus round/next main game); my fellow game show fans have
strongly suggested that a fourth was kept backstage to quickly replace
damaged cards without having to stop filming.  Still, to their extensive game
show contacts and knowledge, no others were known to remain in existence
at the time I asked (Wink's staff told me even he didn't have one).

Regarding smaller-sized promotional decks, I do know that one was made
for "Card Sharks", but unfortunately it did not feature the same faces as the
cards on the show.  Interestingly enough, this deck is certainly related to a
deck used on one other game show, and may (if my surmise proves accurate)
be related to Card Sharks as well.  Still researching...

Below is a picture showing all the face cards (you can see the QD and AD
missing from the eBay deck, as well as the Snidely Whiplash-inspired Jack),
and also the middle of a Solitaire game which takes up an entire living room.
I notice that the pips are designed to be as vertical as possible (the pips on
the fives are arranged in a single column); this allows the index numerals to
be maximized so they can be seen easily by a studio audience.

[Don Boyer]

I don't know...  only FOUR decks to last for 910 shows over four seasons?  I'd wager that it's more like there were four at any given time and that periodically replacements were made - not a lot of them, to be certain, but I can't see just four decks lasting through all that wear and tear on the set of a game show.  You know yourself from handling them how difficult they are to shuffle, and you couldn't leave them unshuffled from show to show - some damage between shows must have occurred, requiring new decks to be printed.  I think my number of a dozen is a good one, but it's just an educated guess, and just as the shows themselves weren't saved (much to the chagrin of the Game Show Network, I'm sure), the records indicating how many were made any by whom may also be long gone.

If you DID know the name of the manufacturer, there's a fair shot they'd have the records.  Some businesses keep their records a VERY long time - the cards were probably made by a print shop somewhere in LA, and probably not far from the studio.  It would be a matter of whether that business was still in business, of course, but if they are, you might be one step closer to more info about those cards.

On the one hand, I'm not surprised that the shows were considered somewhat "disposable," but on the other hand, any program that makes it to 65 episodes has a good chance of getting sold into syndication - 65 episodes allows for 13 weeks of air time without a repeated episode, five days a week.  I'm shocked that this wasn't considered, but then again, game shows didn't get syndicated in reruns anywhere near as often as dramas and comedies.  Even to this day, there's not much call for reruns of game shows outside of GSN, but then again, there's not many game shows left (unless you count primetime "reality" game shows like Survivor).  I know "Let's Make a Deal" and "The Dating Game" were on in reruns for a while, but they were kind of whacky and offbeat, not as straightforward.  LMAD had the crazy audience costumes and TDG was kind of like proto-reality TV!