Covid-19 playing cards
Covid-19 playing cards designed by Stacey Kelly, United Kingdom, 2020.
This pack of 56 cards which includes 3 identical jokers and an information card was produced by the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards and designed by Stacey Kelly of Squiddleink to commemorate the Covid-19 pandemic and the work done by the nurses and medical teams of the National Health Service (NHS). The ace of spades displays the Company’s Master for 2019-2020, Dr C. John Eaton. The other aces and pip cards are standard while the courts show colour drawings of medical personnel – all wearing safety masks. All profits from the sale of these cards were donated to the Lord Mayor of London’s Charities. See the box►
Above: Covid-19 playing cards designed by Stacey Kelly and produced by the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards, 2020.
By Peter Burnett
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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