The Playing Cards of The World!

An Unofficial Reference for Collectors of relatively modern Playing Cards.

Welcome to my WIKI - Let me introduce myself - my name is Ray Nilsson and I live in Melbourne, Australia. I am a member of the MPCC and the APCCS (see LINKS page). If you wish to contact me, my email address is raynilsson@gmail.com

Having decided to have an early retirement (while redundancy payment lasts) - I thought it a great opportunity to develop an internet based resource for playing cards. In my opinion, all the books I have seen (with a few exception - see BOOKS page) seem to concentrate on the ancient history of cards, not their modern use and/or design differences. That's fair enough but not everyone can collect cards of the 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th Centuries.

I have been a collector of Playing Cards for a relatively short time (only 20 years) and have now, well and truly been bitten by the bug.  From an interest in Motor Cars and their advertising, I started collecting Auto ads on cards. This led me to Australian-made automobile (car) cards and then to all Australian-made cards.

Once I had documented the 4 manufacturers in AUSTRALIA, I decided to reach across the Tasman and look at the cards made in NEW ZEALAND - Initially I created reference documents but unfortunatley lost many hours of work with a computer upgrade (I won't point my finger at Windows but I'm now using Apple Computers - the latest is an Apple iMac G5 (free advertisment) and it's great.    I'm thinking of updating but then again...

My next interest was the advertising overprints made in USA by Brown and Bigelow and USPCC.   All of these subjects are available by linking to the appropriate page, either directly or using the links in the Sidebar.

As a collector, please feel free to help me expand these pages. Write me at raynilsson@gmail.com for the contributor password.   Don't by shy - DO IT !

NOTE: I am happy to announce that, finally, another collecter has added to my pages - Thanks John.  Please be sure to check the pages for the new information and scans.  (UNITED KINGDOM)   For a while there I thought it was going to be a sole effort.  I believe it's fairly easy to learn how to add pages and information - please consider giving it a go.

Thanks and ENJOY..... Ray Nilsson

Naming Guide for Scans of Cards

Not to be rigidly enforced, but I thought some form of naming convention should exist.  There is no need to upload huge images (300 dpi etc) and pages can handle 4 or 5 images on one line for images approx 100 dots wide at a resolution of 72 dpi.  My recommended naming system is :

XXX-XX-XXXNNX.jpg

where    XXX = Country (USA = America, AUS = Australia etc)

             XX = Manufacturer (BB = Brown & Bigelow etc)

             XXXNNX = GROUPING/NUMBER/VERSION

             jpg = type of image saved

Portrait images = 100 x 150 dots, Landscape images = 150 x 100 dots, Square images = 150 x 150 dots  (guide only)

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