Alaska scenic playing cards
Alaska scenic playing cards featuring scenes of Alaskan life, USA, c. 1960.
Published by Brown & Bigelow, c. 1960, this souvenir pack features scenes of Alaska and Alaskan life on each suited card. The scenes are in black-and-white within rectangular frames, with title/description beneath. They include Juneau Airport, Caribou Migration, Alaskan Rainbow Trout, Horseshoe Lake, Salmon Cannery-Kodiak, Alaskan Volcano, Sitka Alaska, Anchorage at Night, Humpback Whale, Fairbanks Alaska, Nunivak Eskimo Village, and others. Two playful jokers complete the pack. See the box►
Above: Alaska scenic playing cards published by Brown & Bigelow, c. 1960.
The cardboard box has a felt-like covering on the top, and gold foil around the edges. The reverse shows a log cabin against a lake and mountain background.
By Peter Burnett
United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022 • Contact
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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