WHICH APCC DECK IS THIS ONE?

By Steve Bowling

About a year ago, while puzzling over the brand of several American Playing Card Co. decks which had no joker or box, I decided to build a data base of back designs and correlate them to their brand/joker.  Even if a 52 card deck was found in an American PC box, it would be difficult to determine that it was the correct deck if it was without the back-matched joker.  Many members of 52 Plus Joker have helped in my research, notably The Queen, Toby Edwards, Jack Ferrell, Sue Henderson, Barb Lunaberg, and Mike “Mr. Joker” Zahorian. 

My objective was to publish articles in CTD showing all the back designs for Premiers, Rovers, Senators, etc.  Those of you with science backgrounds know that research does not always support the hypothesis – and that is the case with American PC back designs.  With some exceptions, back designs were used on multiple brands.

  However I was able to determine the following:

1. Premiers are the only brand with colored pictorial backs, somewhat similar to Congress – and I found no example of any other back type for Premiers.

2. If your wide Am PC deck has a back with a golfing motif, I believe you can be sure it is Golf, but in the case of the narrow, it is not necessarily Golfette as the golf back pictured below is a Brownie deck!

3. Rovers have some very attractive picture backs, such as riverboats and kayaks, but they also come with geometric and other patterns.

5. A monotone picture of a woman (very much like the named series by Standard PC) was a Derby deck.  But other Derby decks had picture/pattern backs.

6. Small American PC card samples (see picture) for Senators and Sportingman exhibited common back types.

Also pictured below are a baseball back from a 52 card deck, and a beautiful Columbians back design.  If anyone knows the brand of the baseball deck please write or email me at Srbutchner@aol.com

I have photocopies of about 50 back designs, most with associated jokers – and I would be delighted to help any member determine which brand a deck might/could not be.

Editor’s note:  This is the type of research that goes a long way in helping all collectors of playing cards resolve some of the ambiguity about their decks.  Unfortunately American PCC, almost without exception, used the same Ace of Spades for their decks and this constantly raises the question of which of their many brands any one of us might have in our collections.

Steve has studying this company for some time to try to determine which deck we have if it is missing the Joker and/or box. It would be wonderful if other members would follow his example and do similar research on other such playing card mysteries. The more we know, the easier collecting becomes.

Thanks Steve

EPHEMERA COLUMN

In keeping with Steve’s article on the very interesting and one of our favorite playing card companies I have decided to do another page plus on the wonderful black and white ads that were used to promote the American Playing Card Company and their cards.

The interesting thing is that over years we have been collecting these great early ads it appears that APCC rarely, if ever, featured any brands except their Golf Playing Cards.  We have quite a number of these ads but have never seen or heard of any other brands.  As Tom is such an avid golfer, these advertisements rank high on our list of favorites!

One thing that is notably missing in these ads are the male golfers.  Were they working too hard in the late 1800’s to play golf or did they take second place to the much more attractive sex?

In spite of this slight oversight we are delighted to present GOLF ADVERTISEMENTS for APCC on remainder of this page and into the next page.