IBUSZ folklore playing cards
Hungarian folklore pack produced by IBUSZ travel agency, c. 1965.
This Hungarian folklore pack was produced by IBUSZ, the largest & oldest travel agency in Hungary, c. 1965. It is a French-suited pack with 52 cards and 2 jokers, each card having 4 corner indices. The aces and courts present attractive coloured drawings of characters dressed in Hungarian traditional dress. Emblems of hunting, fishing, agriculture and music are displayed on the aces.
Above: IBUSZ Hungarian folklore pack, c. 1965.
Note: The Tourism and Travel Corporation, the immediate predecessor of IBUSZ, was founded on August 29, 1902. From December 1926, the company began to operate under the name IBUSZ, an acronym for Idegenforgalmi, Beszerzési, Utazási és Szállítási Részvénytársaság (Tourist, Procurement, Travel and Transportation Joint Stock Company).
By Peter Burnett
United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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