I was wondering if anyone knows who commissioned these older colored decks ?
Purple Rider Back (Standard - Not Reversed Purple Deck done by Magic Makers)
Black Tally-Ho Circle (Not the Reversed Viper or or Penguin Magic White Deck)
Black Tally-Ho Fan (Not the Reversed Viper Deck or Penguin Magic White Deck)
& Different Black Tally-Ho Fan (Not the Reversed Viper or Penguin Magic White Deck)
For example - BMPokerworld did the Brown deck, and Vincenzo Di Fatta did the Turquoise Deck
Thank you all for any info.
Of the older, basic Bicycle Rider Backs in different colors, green, orange, gold, silver, turquoise, fuchsia and "rainbow" were commissioned by Vincenzo di Fatta, an Italian producer of many decks, especially Bicycle-branded ones. Brown was commissioned by Brooke Michael's Poker World, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gambler's Warehouse. Yellow and burgundy/maroon were commissioned by a British company called the Bond Agency, operators of cards4magic.co.uk. I think the purple is newer and made recently by and for USPC, not as part of a private commission - they also released a "teal" deck that looks more like pale mint. Check the bottom of the pack and see if it has copyright info with a copyright date of 2015. (Again, I can't see adequate detail because your photo is too small!) The info will list USPC in there somewhere, but if it was by and for them, no other company will be mentioned.
Regarding the black Tally Ho decks, the story I heard was that an unknown magician had them commissioned from USPC and distributed them to magic shops - they have a blank-faced card and a double-backer card instead of ad cards in each pack, plus two identical standard TH jokers, a sure sign they weren't made by USPC for USPC, because they generally use a joker as a guarantee joker in all their standard decks that they make, plus the fact that they're only in magic stores. Of the decks you have on display, the left Original Fan Back is old stock printed in Cincinnati while the other two decks appear to be new stock printed in Erlanger - old stock has a barcode on the bottom of the tuck box, new decks from Erlanger have copyright details on the bottom of the tuck box and no barcode.
To compare, there's a black version of the Bicycle Rider Back that USPC makes and sells as their own product - it has the same ad cards and guarantee joker as an ordinary pack would and recently became available in the modern "Standard" box as they've depleted their remaining stock of "Classic" boxed packs. It's exclusively available as part of a four-deck boxed set intended for poker players, consisting of two black decks and two red decks, but many deck retailers have been known to separate the boxed sets and sell the decks separately, with the black ones at a notable mark-up due to relative rarity/exclusivity. The boxed sets are sold at many USPC retailers - I've seen them most often at Walgreens drugstores. I'm not 100% certain off the top of my head, but I believe that the new black boxes have no barcodes on them while the red ones have them - the red decks are the same as the ones sold individually while the black decks are not intended for individual sale, only as part of the boxed set, which has its own bar code.
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