Wad-04

The first deck on this page is depicted in full in John Berry's catalogue as W60 (plate 11). It was published ca. 1930 as "Casino Series No 4444" and this edition doesn't have indices. In his text John Berry refers to a second edition from ca. 1946, that was published as "Unique Style Playing Cards".

The designs of the courts remained the same, but English indices have been added. This version isn't shown in the catalogue, so we'll show the courts here. Maker's name and city are on the Jack of Spades. The pattern is called "Trente et Quarante". The cards measure 50 x 82 mm. (same as the original edition).

The second deck on this page isn't depicted in the Waddington catalogue either, nor is there a reference to be found. It shows a modern version of the Parisian pattern on the courts, but has plain aces. The name of John Waddington is on the shield of the Jack of Clubs, which is consistent with the pattern, but the Ace of Clubs has no special embellishment as is often seen with this pattern.

The deck consists of 52 cards, a joker and a blank card. The cards measure 66 x 97 mm and have gold edges. The back design is interesting. It shows a design that is similar to those that were often used on the inside of older hard-cover books. However, this is no indication of it's age. The large indices and the modern pattern would rather suggest that the deck was made in the 1950's or 60's, but from Ken Lodge (see his blog) we learned that it was published from the late 1960's to the early 1970's. He also mentioned that the deck can be found without indices (and has send us a few pictures of them) or with an Ace of Spades that mentions the name of the manufacturer and the places of their factories (London, Leeds and Newcastle).