Introduction to collecting Playing Cards.

Swap cards are mostly from a deck of normal playing cards. Collectors take one of each design or pattern from the deck for their collection. Usually there are a pair, but sometimes there may be four decks in a box, with different colours or pictures in each deck. Sometimes there is no 'pair' for a card, if just one pack was produced by the manufacturer, using the same pattern for the entire deck of cards. (Swap cards were also produced by Coles and Woolworths in the 1950's. These are now rare, and highly valued among collectors.)

A matching pair of cards can be the same design with variations in colour, or different pictures with the same kind of border to show they are a pair. There may even be four varieties of the one pattern in different colours. The subjects on the front of cards are endless. Some collectors only save a certain topic, such as animals, or just one kind of animal. Old fashioned or vintage-style pictures such as crinoline ladies and Old Masters paintings are popular. Other collectors specialise in Jokers or Aces.

In 1956, Coles Stores produced four separate sets of cards to commemorate the Olympic Games in Melbourne. There are 28 cards in each set, with flags of the competing nations, flora, fauna, industry, and sporting events pictured on them.

Wednesday 13 May 2009

Vintage ladies cards.

Now that the dogs and cats are 'done', I thought I should start on the Old Fashioned/Vintage/Crinoline Ladies cards, whichever you want to call them. Strictly speaking, they are not all Crinoline ladies, so I prefer to just call them Old Fashioned Ladies. Some of the ladies on these cards have male partners...maybe I should call them Old Fashioned People? Ah, what the heck...
Some of these images are not very clear. This is because the cards themselves are faded due to their age. Bear in mind that I have had these older cards since the 1950's, and they were faded when I got them, so goodness only knows how old they are - 70 or 80 years maybe?




Some improvements made to this blog.

I haven't done much to this blog since it was created, but I still get a number of visitors here, so I decided to upgrade it a little. When I first set it up, I didn't know how to change the layout, so I posted the introduction as an ordinary post, but dated it 2010, so it would stay at the top of the blog where readers could see it first up. Today, after all this time I discovered that I could add a piece of text to the permanent template, so I transferred my introduction post to the top section of the blog. In doing that, I lost 14 comments that were there, so I apologise to anyone who might be looking for them! Somehow I doubt it, as most of them had been there for over a year.

I have added two items to the sidebar. One is a fascinating website on the history of playing cards, and the other is a Flickr photo show which was created by my friend Marian. She invited me to post photos of my cards there, but after discussing the pros and cons, we decided that we would leave things as they are, i.e. I will continue to post photos of my collection here, and Marian will post hers on her Flickr account.

Another modification I have made is to put labels on all my posts, so if someone is looking for cards with dogs on, they should be able to find them without having to scroll through the whole blog. Just click on the label at the foot of any post, and it will take you to all the posts in that category.

All this has motivated me to extract the digit and start scanning more of my cards, so expect some more photos here soon!