Orange: Great Value, Free Rewards

Published February 24, 2023 • Updated November 11, 2023

“Orange: Great Value, Free Rewards” promotional playing cards published by Orange UK.

In this promotional pack published by Orange UK for subscribers all the suits are all non-standard. The four suits are monkeys, dolphins, canaries and racoons, while the two jokers are camels. Each of these suits represent a free reward from the company: music and texts, Facebook and texts, free calls to any network, or 15p calls to any network. The jokers offer calls abroad for 5p. The dolphin and monkey suits are coloured orange. The courts are minimalistic, having just a large J, Q or K in the centre. See the box►

Above: “Orange: Great Value, Free Rewards” promotional playing cards published by Orange UK.

NOTE: Orange mobile UK was a mobile network operator and internet service provider in the United Kingdom, launched in 1994. It was purchased by France Télécom in 2000 and in 2010 Orange UK merged with T-Mobile UK to form a joint venture, EE. The Orange brand continued to operate for new customers until 2015, and was finally withdrawn in 2019.

533 Articles

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.