Nation’s capital souvenir playing cards
Nation’s capital souvenir playing cards published by the United States Playing Card Company, USA, 1925
Published by the United States Playing Card Company, Cincinnati in 1925, this pack displays oval photos of places of interest in and around the city of Washington, including the White House, Library of Congress, Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and many others. The background of the photos differs by suit: hearts have a blue background; spades – a pink background; diamonds – green background; and clubs – a yellow background. The pack includes one joker, a USPCC promotional card and a card listing the sights presented. The reverse of the cards depicts the Goddess of Justice against a dark blue background framed by columns, with a white border. See the box►
Above: Nation’s capital souvenir playing cards published by the United States Playing Card Company, USA, 1925.
See: Hochman encyclopedia of American playing cards, p. 261, no. S66.
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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