Vintage skyscraper playing cards
Vintage skyscraper playing cards published by Inkstone Design, Inc., 2005.
Vintage skyscraper playing cards reproduces photographs of some of the earliest and most striking skyscrapers built in the USA, together with details of location, height, date of completion, and the name of the main architect. It was published in 2005 by Inkstone Design, Inc. of Missoula, Montana, and comes in a purpose-designed flip-top metal box with images of skyscrapers on all sides. The two jokers show a photo from the Beaux Arts Ball at the Astor Hotel in New York City in 1931. Accompanying the cards, which have silver edges, is a brief history of the skyscraper written by the historian Dannel McCollum. See the tin►
Above: Vintage skyscraper playing cards published by Inkstone Design, Inc., 2005.
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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