British American Tobacco patience

Published May 12, 2016 Updated December 30, 2018

Patience deck for British American Tobacco printed by Speelkaartenfabriek Nederland c.1940

Netherlands United Kingdom Speelkaartenfabriek Nederland Miniature Tobacco

Patience deck for British American Tobacco printed by Speelkaartenfabriek Nederland. The deck arrived sealed in an import duty wrapper, with no box, just a rectangle of paper holding the cards together, supplied as being produced for B.A.T. in 1940. As Holland was occupied by the Germans from May 1940, it is unlikely that they are from a later date.

Patience deck for British American Tobacco printed by Speelkaartenfabriek Nederland c.1940 Patience deck for British American Tobacco printed by Speelkaartenfabriek Nederland c.1940

Above: patience deck for British American Tobacco printed by Speelkaartenfabriek Nederland c.1940. Images courtesy Matt Probert.

set produced for the WD & HO Wills scheme of the early 1930s
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By Matt Probert

Member since March 02, 2012

I have adored playing cards since before I was seven years old, and was brought up on packs of Waddington's No 1. As a child I was fascinated by the pictures of the court cards.

Over the next fifty years I was seduced by the artwork in Piatnik's packs and became a collector of playing cards.

Seeking more information about various unidentified packs I discovered the World of Playing Cards website and became an enthusiastic contributor researching and documenting different packs of cards.

I describe my self as a playing card archaeologist, using detective work to identify and date obscure packs of cards discovered in old houses, flea markets and car boot sales.

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