Adventure Fours
Adventure Fours playing cards with differently coloured suit symbols, USA 1977
Produced by the Graphics Center Inc., Bloomfield, CT in 1977, this pack has four differently coloured suit symbols: green clubs, red hearts, black spades and blue diamonds. Such packs are often called no-revoke (or non-revoke) as the idea is to make the suits more easily recognizable during play. But unlike most other no-revoke packs (e.g. Hesslers enhanced, Arpak, Spectrum bridge, or Non-revoke) the court cards are non-standard, dressed as royalty in colourful medieval costume reflecting their suit colour.
Above: Adventure Fours playing cards produced by the Graphics Center Inc., Bloomfield, CT in 1977.
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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