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.