My Favorite Older Casino Playing Cards

These cards are in no special order, some I like for the design, some I like for the memories. If you have any cards to share please feel free to send me your images.

The Most Expensive Casino Playing Cards

Today on Ebay I noticed that 2 unopened sealed decks were at $150.00 and the reserve was not even met yet. And there were almost 4 days left until the auction is over. Where are the playing cards from? Jerry's Nugget located in North Las Vegas, Nevada.

Why are these cards so sought after and the prices so high? Magicians.... yes, magicians value the cards for card tricks. Do a "Google" search on "Jerry's Nugget Magician" and you will find all kinds of sites, pages and blogs dedicated to one of the most perfect magician cards.

What about Fakes?
With prices so high, someone one day is going to come up with counterfeit Jerry's Nugget Playing Cards. What can you do to possibly protect yourself from such counterfeiters? Have casino cards ever been counterfeited or knocked-off? Yes, the Sand's Regency in Reno. There are knock-offs floating around being sold at truck stops, gift shops, etc... so if someone would knock-off a regular casino card then they would knock-off something of higher value.

Protect Yourself
The cards were manufactured by the United States Playing Card Company. So the bottom of the tuck box should be glued, not a inserted flap, look for the USPC stamp on the flap. I don't have a deck from Jerry's Nugget I have individual cards. So I don't know what is printed on the sides or the back of the box. One of the most important thing that may help is the Ace of Spades on USPC cards has a letter and number code that are assigned to each printing project. The letter code somewhat corresponds to the year of manufacturer and the 4 digit number follows the letter. These are older cards so the color of the code is BLUE. The Code I have on my single aces in my collection are M 4924. If the code is in BLACK then it's probably a knock-off, because USPC did not change the code colors from Blue to Black until the mid 1980's. If there is no code it's probably a knock-off, if the second number from the left is not a 9 it's probably a knock-off. Below is a cut off scan of a Ace of Spades, the code is actually in blue.

Please if you have an actual deck of the Jerry's Nugget cards please share your code located on the Ace of Spades by posting a reply below, this may help magicians and collectors in the future.

One Last Comment on Jerry's Nugget
When in Las Vegas and you want a awesome prime rib dinner at a reasonable price you should try Jerry's Nugget! I would like to also mention that Jerry's Nugget has great food and their bakery goods are to die for. Not in the best part of town, but you will feel safe there, a little oasis in North Las Vegas, make an effort to visit Jerry's Nugget when visiting Las Vegas!

Visit Jerry's Nugget website: www.jerrysnugget.com

Manufactures and their card back designs

Listed are the major manufactures of playing cards in the United States, there are quite a few others around so I don't want to say that this is the definitive list of all the manufacturer's worldwide. More will be posted at a later date.

Cartamundi USA
Cartamundi is a Belgium company that has plants around the world. Recently changed the name of their casino cards to "Blackjack Brand" Below are shown their main designs. Not shown is the negative circle design where the background colors are reversed. Cartamundi also owns COPAG plastic playing cards, which are making headway in cardrooms around the world.

Gemaco
Gemaco has been in the casino card business since the 1980's. They have really made a lot of headway in the business. Their main back design is the gemback, but in recent years they have added other designs to their offerings.Hoyle
Hoyle Professional Gambling Cards have been used in casinos in Nevada and the Midwest. Hoyle was bought out by the US Playing Card Company and the Professional Gambling Cards are no longer produced.
KEM
Kem is the one of the leaders in plastic playing cards used in poker rooms around the world. Kem makes a high quality playing card that is durable for use in poker rooms. KEM was purchased by USPC.
Liberty
Liberty has been in the casino card business since the 1980's. Has not really taken to much market share in the casino card business, the cards seem to be of high quality.
Paul Son Playing Cards
Paul Son bought the Royal Playing Card Company in the 1980's and started manufacturing playing cards, the inexpensive cost of the cards plus Paul Son's nitch as a gaming product distributor gave Paul Son a good lead in the casino card business. Paul Son was purchased by GPI (Gaming Partners International).

United States Playing Card Company (USPC)
The mack daddy of casino playing cards, highly innovative company, high quality products. Bee and Aristocrat cards are used around the world. USPC has a dating code located on the Ace of Spades. I will post an updated list of the code in the future.

USPC Bee

Bee Stinger

Aristocarat
Originally named Casino Club Specials USPC remenamed the cards after an older brand that was aquired decades ago.

Aristocrat Stinger

Please feel free to comment or make corrections .

My First Cards

I started collecting casino playing cards in the spring of 1975 on a trip to Lake Tahoe. At that time I was not old enough to enter a casino, however Harrah's Lake Tahoe had a "Recreation Center" where parents could check in the kids and then the parents could proceed to the casino to get some adult recreation. In the recreation center to my amazement was a vending machine with playing cards that were used in the casino and dice. I bought a deck of each color (red and blue) and a pair of dice. I became very interested in casino cards at that time.

Later on that year I convinced my parents to take another trip to Lake Tahoe. My parents liked the shows but thought gaming was very boring. So to make me happy we took another trip to Lake Tahoe that following summer.

And I was brave enough to walk into the gift shops of the 3 casinos at South Lake Tahoe and purchase some more coveted playing cards from Harvey's and the former Sahara Tahoe.

Later that year we had some neighbors that were going to Reno for a weekend I asked them to purchase some playing cards for me to add to my small collection, they brought me back decks from the Club Cal-Neva and John Ascuaga's Nugget I was so happy to add these to my collection.

Today over 30 years later my collection consists of over 4,000 decks of casino playing cards from casinos around the world. By no means is my collection complete. I am always looking for new cards, old cards and everything in between to make my collection as complete as possible.

If you have any questions about casino playing cards please drop me a line, if you have any cards or images of cards I would love to see what you have.