February 2026

 

I had my eyes on two lots in the Potter & Potter auction of February 19, but was outbid on both. So no "Allied Armies" or "Medieval" deck here and once again I had to find one in my collection for this spot. As I've found a good home for more than 95% of the antique non-standard decks chances of having to show a vintage or modern deck here get higher and higher. However, instead of going through the albums I decided to first scan my desk, which is always filled with piles of decks. 

And it worked! I came across this antique patience deck.

The cards measure 28x45 mm and I decided to present them here at an enlarged size to show more detail. The deck was printed in fine chromolithography by Kruckow from Copenhagen. According to Ali's book about Nordic playing cards the regular sized deck was published as Danske Spillekort (Danish Playing Cards) around 1900. He doesn't mention this patience sized version, which was probably published around the same time or a little later. Jensen shows the full sized deck in the Kruckow section as 9-08 and he mentions two patience sized decks, of which this deck is one. The other measures 70x45 mm, in my opinion a bit large for patience and I would rather describe that as a "pour dames" measurement. Unfortunately my deck came without the original box.

What else is there to say........
The deck has small Danish indices and plain aces.
Each suit has its own color of cape on the courts: spades - brown, hearts - green, clubs - blue and diamonds - red.
And all the jacks hold a halberd.

 

 

 

 

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