Februari 23

Does the lockdown make you feel blue? These courts show what will probably happen to you too when a lockdown lasts for more than 110 years. They belong to a Swedish deck, printed on etched plates and stencil coloured by A. Boman from Stockholm. It was published as Classic, a house pattern, from c1876 - 1890 (Jerremalm, p41). However, our deck was dated by Boman as some 20 years later on the manufacturer's stamp. Although unreadable it can at the latest be read as 1909. There's also a brown version of this pattern. It was our Deck of the Month in January 2017. See: deck-month-17. Ali dates that version as 1890 -1900 and our brown deck has a manufacturer's stamp dated 97.
There are 3 Boman decks in our collection with French names on the kings and queens and in all three decks the name of the QC is spelled as ARCINE, where it should be spelled as ARGINE (the official French name). I guess the Boman company had it's reasons for that, just as for leaving out the names on the jacks. But maybe the latter is a Swedish thing. In a deck with French names on the kings and queens by the Swedish LAB from Norrköping the jacks also remain nameless. I showed it in the previous lockdown series: lock-05-13.

Ali Jerremalm:
Congratulations, Joop on another insightful observation. Fun to see! The blue cards belonged to the 1880's and were replaced by the brown ones in the early 1890's. It was thought to be much nicer and more modern! When the company could no longer meet the quality of the competitors Oberg and Lithografen, the remaining stock was sold out. Apparently there were still some blue decks left. They were probably sold very cheaply then. The question is what a collector's nerd would be willing to pay for such a "misprint" today. Maybe not so much anyway?