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.