April 3

For those of you who have followed this lockdown series since the beginning this deck may look familiar and the title should ring a bell. The deck was published as "Fredericus Rex", so the same title as the deck that I showed on January 9. The printer of both decks is the same too: F.X. Schmid (Vereinigte Münchener Spielkartenfabriken). And to top it off, the artist is the same Jan Baumann too. We had dated the January 9 deck as c 1930. The tax stamp on this deck was in use between 1923 and 1929, but I guess that it was probably published closer to 1929 than to 1923. It's possible that the designs of this deck were considered too modern and a second attempt was made. The designs of the January 9 deck are a bit less crude, the faces a bit smaller, showing more of the torso, as if the artist had taken a step back. Also 2 of the jacks and one of the queens were replaced by a different figure in that edition and the KC was replaced by a Fredericus with hat. Perhaps this was a first edition, followed not long after by the (improved) January 9 edition. Remarkable is that both decks have the same back design.

	The deck came in the original box.