North American wildlife playing cards
From humid wetlands to frozen tundra, the wildlife in North America is extremely diverse.
This pack, produced by Impact Photographics of El Dorado Hills, CA, displays 52 different photographs of wild animals native to North America. Informative text beneath each photo gives the name of the animal (common and scientific), together with information of its size, diet, hunting habit, and a description of the environment in which it lives. The photographs are credited to Tom & Pat Leeson, Erwin & Peggy Bauer, and Breck Kent. There are two identical jokers showing an American wild turkey (repeated on the king of diamonds), and two extra cards explaining the extreme diversity of North American wildlife. The same photo appears both on the box and on the back of the cards.
Above: North American wildlife playing cards produced by Impact Photographics of El Dorado Hills, CA. Undated.
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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