LBJ Texas playing cards
LBJ Texas playing cards, each card contains different historical facts about Texas, USA, 1966.

Published by E and S Company, Austin, Texas, c. 1966. Each card contains different historical facts about Texas - home of President Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the USA, who took over from JFK in 1963 and left office in 1969 after being beaten in the election by Richard Nixon. A proud Texan, LBJ launched the Great Society and oversaw a massive civil rights and poverty reduction programme. He also oversaw a massive expansion of the Vietnam War. There are 4 extra cards (2 jokers and 2 “Know your State” cards) – all of which list the 100+ rodeos and pageants that take place in Texas each year. Overall. the pack is a veritable mine of information about the State. See the box►



Above: “LBJ Texas” playing cards, published by E and S Company, Austin, Texas, c. 1966.

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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