By Maribeth Keane — I started collecting in 1986. If you’re in Boston and you’re a baseball fan, the Red Sox may take over your life. They take over your life in a way that other teams don’t. With the Red Sox, I was so used to everything being terrible. They’d get your hopes up and then they crush your will to live. So collecting cards grew from that appreciation. It became an easy way for me to harness OCD and my love of baseball. I got cards as a Christmas present in 1986 when I was 7 and was immediately...

Collecting Modern Facsimiles of Historical Playing Cards

By Rod Starling — Collecting facsimile playing cards can be an interesting window onto the world of historic and antique playing card decks. In a recent article dealing with fortune telling cards, I wrote approvingly of facsimile decks and most of the decks featured, were in fact facsimiles. I thought a few more words on the subject along with some further examples might reinforce the point. Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary defines the word facsimile as “an exact copy” and gives the word...

The Force of Collecting Star Wars Cards

By Maribeth Keane — In this interview, Paul Holstein talks about collecting Star Wars cards, from finding obscure cards to completing and grading full sets. I was 10 when the movie came out and I went to the store and bought a couple of packs of Star Wars cards. But I ended up trashing all the cards I had when I was a kid, and in my collection today I have none of the cards that I had then. They all went to the garbage, but later on down the road, seven or eight years ago, in my early 30s, I started...

Collecting Antique and Vintage Playing Cards

By Miriam van Houten and Joop Muller — People are often surprised when we tell them we collect playing cards. They all know how to play games with cards and have all held them in their hands before, but they've never realized that ordinary playing cards come from a long history of ancient patterns, in Europe dating back as far as the 14th century. Local standard patterns appeared, disappeared or evolved over the centuries and different patterns, regional or by country, are still used within the European territory. Besides...

Selling Soap and Smokes With Victorian Trade Cards

By Maribeth Keane — How did I start collecting Victorian trade cards? In the late 60s I was a bottle collector, early American bottles and flasks. I started noticing there were colorful trade cards that advertised the medicines, often with preposterous claims about their curative powers. You could pick these cards up for 10 cents or so, so I started collecting them with the bottles. I just became more and more interested in the trade cards. I continued collecting bottles for another 15 years but eventually as...

The Evolution, History, and Imagery of Playing Cards

By Simon Wintle — For over six centuries - apart from its functionality as a number game - the playing card has been chosen as a medium for artistry, aesthetic endeavour and ornamental design, ranging from hand-painted and engraved cards for medieval patrons, to the chromo-lithographic delights and transformation cards of the nineteenth century, and the designer and art packs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Early Playing Cards and Their Uses The earliest playing cards were hand-painted,...

19th-Century Tobacco Cards

By Marty Weil — Dave Campbell contacted me after reading a post on The Baseball Card blog. He's been collecting baseball cards non-stop since 1981. He has recently created a collection of 19th century Allen & Ginter cards. I talked with him at length about how he got interested in these cards and what it took to assemble the collection. : What prompted you to begin collecting 1880's Allen & Ginter cards? : I'm a big fan of retro-style baseball cards. For the past few years, Topps has taken a...