Amusements and Attractions
‘Amusements and Attractions’ playing cards showing the fun and excitement of America’s amusement parks.
Published in 2007 by Inkstone Design, Inc. of Missoula, Montana this attractive, gilt-edged pack shows the fun, excitement and style of America’s amusement parks, carnivals, roadside attractions, drive-in theatres, and natural wonders, recalling a lost golden era of American social history.
Each card displays a contemporary poster image of an attraction, its date of construction or opening, and a few words of description. The pack has two jokers, both depicting different images of the Fountain of Youth, St. Petersburg, Florida, while the card back displays the Illuminated Star built in 1949, Mill Mountain, Roanoke, Virginia. The pack comes with a leaflet in a purpose-designed flip-top metal box with fairground images on all sides. See the tin►
Above: ‘Amusements and Attractions’ playing cards published in 2007 by Inkstone Design, Inc. Made in China.
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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