JANUARY 2024

For the first time in months I couldn't restrain myself and bought some decks from the collection of the late Dudley Ollis, an English collector with a wonderful collection. A few parts of his collection have already been sold at Dominic Winter auction house and no doubt there's more to come.

There was one lot at the last auction that consisted of 6 decks made by the same company and with the same title: the Royal National Patriotic playing cards by William Kimberley from Birmingham. This deck, especially the first three editions have always been somewhere, not very high, on my wish list, but they are not very often seen on offer. Now that the opportunity was there to get all but one of the different versions, I couldn't resist.

There were 5 different versions of the deck. The first edition dates from 1892/3. This joker wasn't added until the fifth edition from around 1902. Just like the decks, I don't think the joker is easy to find. However, she's jolly enough to be shown here.

No new decks this month, so no jokers to choose from. However, there's always Miriam's collection to go through. Besides the folders with sheets she had a vintage -maybe even antique now- American holder with a joker figure and my cards collection embossed on the red outside cover. There she had put her special vintage or antique single jokers. During a meeting here last September three joker collectors had their way in this holder and a lot of them were sold. But there were some left and I found this one rather attractive.

When I scanned the joker I saw that in the back design the name of the maker was printed: Piatnik Nandor es Fiai. This was the Hungarian branch of the Austrian company of F. Piatnik & Sons. This branch was active between 1896 and 1949, when it was nationalized by the Hungarian government.

According to the WWPCM site this joker was used from 1910 on and has seen different variations since. I think that this version is probably one from the 1920's.

Again no new decks this month, so gain I went to Miriam's collection and took out a random holder. It was the "Women" one, so there were plenty of scarcely dressed pin-up jokers, but enough more decent ones too. And this modern joker is one of them. I've always liked the deck. Not only for the nice Art Nouveau like designs by Otto Benz for the courts and the 3 different jokers, but also for the chosen colours with nice gold and bronze tones and delicate red accents. From the three jokers I chose this one, because it's the only one on which the word joker has been woven into the design so delicately.

If you have some knowledge of cars, you'll recognize the Renault emblem, on which her left arm seems to rest. It's there for a reason. Originally printed and  published by the VASS from Leinfelden, Germany, as an advertising deck for Renault automobiles. Two years later the VASS came with an edition under it's own name. However, on the jokers the Renault emblem was part of the design and although it could have been removed easily, for some reason they left it there.

If all goes well, next month I'll have a nice vintage French joker to show here.

An oldie from a deck, which was one of the decks I had won in the 52+Joker auction. It will be used as an addition to the present xpo about the Paris World Fair of 1900. Almost all the information about the deck can be found on this joker, exxcept for the printer. The deck is listed in the Hochman as SX17, but in the text it's mentioned that "the deck is listed in this chapter, even though it was a foreign fair, as it was made by USPC and likely published by Tom Jones for sale mainly in the United States".
The description confirmed my idea about the printer. On the ace we can read that Tom Jones was located in Denver, but that purchases or information had to go through a P.O. Box in Cincinnati, which happened to be the production place of the USPC at that time.

Next month the joker and all the other cards will be added to the Paris World Fair xpo.
I also received the Piroxloid deck of celluloid cards, which has a very nice joker, but that's already shown as sidekick of the Joker of February 2012. However, if you want to see a really striking, rare vintage French joker, see this time's Deck of the Month.

We got this joker in 1998 when we bought a fortune telling deck on ebay.com. It was the only eBay at that time. There was no information given by the seller and the deck came without the box. It was a non-standard deck, based on the international pattern, with the fortunes printed in French and English. This made us conclude that the deck must have been made/published in Canada. We estimated the date as c1930, based on the back design, which reminded us of an early Mickey Mouse design. If you want to see the Black Cat deck and the back design, HERE is your chance.
As long as I've been active on eBay (Feb.1998 - Aug.2020) I have never seen this deck on offer again. I guess it's a rare deck to find.

I've always liked the deck and especially this joker, but now it's time to say goodbye to my fav black cat. I will take the deck to Turnhout next week and if it's not sold there it will be in the Bargains section soon afterwards.
Because we started this Joker of the Month section in 2004, he never got a chance to become one. So now justice is done and he gets a well deserved spot here.

We all know what GPS stands for nowadays, but on this joker the GPS at his foot refers to the name of the artist: Gerda Ploug Sarp. She was born in 1881 and in 1903 she went to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where she met her husband, the painter Otto Sørensen. In 1915 she started working as the permanent illustrator for the oldest and still existing Danish newspaper, the Berlingske Tidende, and her employment there lasted until she was 75 years old. But she has also illustrated some important contemporary Danish novels and c1930 she designed a deck of cards with this joker, which was originally printed by L. Levison Jr. and published in Denmark as Heimdal Spillekort No.1777 (hombre: 40 cards+J+ec) or No. 7770 (whist: 52 cards+j+ec).

Gerda Ploug Sarp died in 1968 at the age of 86, so she would have seen the later edition of her deck in 1956, printed by the VEB Altenburg. This deck came with 2 jokers: this one and a well known standard factory joker of the VEB Altenburg. For collectors of single jokers it's impossible to know which date to put on their copy of this joker without having the deck. The only difference between the 2 editions is the use of Danish indices (Kn) on the jacks of the first edition and German indices (B) in the later edition. The back design is the same in both editions.

This month I had to go through several folders with jokers in order to reunite them with the rest of their decks. As I don't expect to buy any decks or single jokers this month, it was a good opportunity to look for possible jokers for this spot. Miriam had 2 folders with "standing" jokers and going through them I found this joker. It looked like a vintage one, but I immediately liked the figure and the fact that, instead of the word joker or corner stars, the 4 suits were added to emphasize that in certain games the card could be used in any suit.

Somehow he looked familiar. I suspected German roots, but after spending some time on the WWPCM site, it turned out to be a wrong assumption. Maybe Austrian then? Same result!
It's only about 340 kilometers from Vienna to Prague, which city is also located not far from Germany. Looking at Czechia on the WWPCM site brought a quick result. The joker was used by Miracle from Prague since 1925 to accompany their decks with the Viennese pattern. This version is dated as c1930.

I took out Miriam's holder with "heads" this time. It has sheets with jokers of which only the head is shown, although you can see that an attached bust is allowed there too.
This month I chose a standard factory joker by the Italian maker Fratelli Armanino from Genova. Fratelli is Italian for brothers. They have produced some wonderful non-standard decks (click HERE for a stunning example), but this joker was issued with their standard international pattern decks since the 1920's.

It's not a particularly rare joker. On the WWPCM site I found many different versions of this figure, probably because Armanino has produced these decks until the 1950's. So it's a bit hard to date these jokers, but it could be that this version is an older one. The dots in the corners are of the older type. In  later editions they were replaced by stars. By his numbering of the jokers and backs Sacha, who runs the WWPCM site, seems to acknowledge that too. And also that jokers or decks with two indices or dots are usually older than the ones with four. Still I hesitate to date this joker as 1910/20's and that's because the used card feels too smooth and flexible.
However, the main reason to show this joker here is that it wasn't shown on the WWPCM site! So look at it as an addition for now and I'll get this to Sacha's attention.

Over the years we have had several different old or vintage jokers which advertised Philips. There's even a joker xpo of 9 of them, but that was put up in 2004 and it doesn't include this one.
I came across it when I was looking for another joker in the heads holder to complete a deck with. This Philips joker holds a mini cassette and a voice recorder. The back shows a king with a voice recorder on the top side and a queen with a typewriter on the other side. In the dividing line across the b/w design it reads "la machine à dicter Philips, une question d'organisation" (the Philips voice recorder, a question of organization).

Apparently the joker came with a deck for the French market and was probably produced in France. If it was aimed at the Belgian market, the slogan on the back would have been bilingual, with a Flemish translation too.

Roughly dating the deck wasn't very difficult, as Philips introduced the mini cassette and voice recorder in 1967. So late 1967 or early 1968 will be a safe choice.

Last month I bought one deck at an auction. It was never issued with a joker, but the deck also hadn't arrived in time for this update. So I had to go through Miriam's collection again. 
This one looked like an old one and it should make my life easy as there's a name and date on it. So I chose this joker. However, I should have checked before I had scanned it, but I found that a similar joker was presented here exactly seven years ago. Similar, but fortunately not exactly the same. 
This was the description that I gave in October 2017: The joker comes from a deck that was published by the FDB, a Danish consumer chain, as "All Brittish Playing Cards" in 1933. The deck was printed by Alf Cooke/Universal Playing Cards. The designs were done by Bogelund.
The difference with that joker is that it didn't have the name and date on it and the word joker on the banner is printed in black instead of the brown lettering on this one. So there must have been a second print run at least and the description of 2017 should be changed to "since 1933". Also the name should be changed to Bógelund.

No new decks with jokers again this month, so one from Miriam's collection again. This time an a-select method was used. First I picked a holder and "Standing II" came out of the hat. Then I chose one number under 50 and one under 19. They were 21 and 6, so I went to the 21st sheet and took out the joker that was on the 6th spot of the sheet.

It's a modern one and the back has Federate Life in large red letters against a pink background with South African Bridge Federation in small white letters diagonally across.
I had already seen that the joker must have been made by the Protea Playing Card Company from Johannesburg. It has the flower in the corners, which is typical for this manufacturer. The same flower can be found on their aces of spades as well. The company uses them on jokers for standard decks. There have been some different standard joker, but I guess this is the youngest one. I can't put a date on it, but think it was used after 2010.

So which flower has this company used? A short research brought a flower that could be stylized into this design and with the common name of Doll's Protea (Latin name: Macledium zeyheri) I'm pretty sure it's the one.

The jokers of the month from.....