Agatha Christie Playing Cards

Published October 26, 2022 • Updated October 28, 2022

Agatha Christie playing cards produced by Planet Three Collection, United Kingdom, c. 2004.

This pack of 52 cards and 2 jokers was produced by Planet Three Collection. This publisher produced the Agatha Christie Collection of 85 hardback volumes between 2001 and 2004 as a magazine subscription, with each volume issued fortnightly at £4.99. Accompanying the books came 85 magazines in 5 binders. This pack was probably associated with that large publishing endeavour.

It is a standard pack with the exception of the court cards, which are repeated in each suit. The Kings are Hercule Poirot; the Queens are Miss Jane Marple, and the Jacks are Captain Arthur Hastings, the companion-chronicler and best friend of Hercule Poirot. He is also the narrator of several of Christie’s novels. The back of the cards has an oval photograph of Agatha Christie with her printed autograph below.

Above: Agatha Christie playing cards produced by Planet Three Collection, United Kingdom, c. 2004.

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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.

• Russian Playing Cards

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.