Bicycle Stained glass playing cards
Bicycle Stained glass playing cards adorned as multi-coloured stained glass, USA, c. 2018.
Funded via Kickstarter, this colourful pack was published by Collectable Playing Cards and printed by the United States Playing Card Company in 2018. Against a black background, the pip cards display the same stained glass pattern effect on each card, differentiated only by the presence of the different suit symbols, while the court cards are the standard international pattern but adorned in multi-coloured stained glass attire. There are two equally multi-coloured jokers, and the card backs are designed to look like a dazzling circular stained glass window. See the box►
Above: Bicycle Stained glass playing cards published by Collectable Playing Cards and printed by the United States Playing Card Company, USA, c. 2018.
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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