Friar’s Club/Regular Playing Cards (1973)

Welcome back to another round of cool things in my collection.

This time, its one of my personal and crowd favorites, Friar’s Club Playing Cards. I personally call them Regular Playing Cards since thats what the box says, but online/ebay thinks its Friar’s Club, mostly because of the Ace of Spades.

So, where did these come from. Well, back in 2011, a Japanese online magic store had hundreds of these for sale for 3$ each. Naturally I bought a hundred or so of the remaining stock through a overseas shipping service and turned a few bricks off on Ebay for 50-80$ a pair in 2012. As of writing now, I see a pair on Ebay trying to sell for 400$…well good luck to whoever that is in China.

Well, turns out they’re from 1973 and a very popular vintage find due to the clean design and similarity to some sense with Jerry’s Nuggets. I still have to get some JN’s and compare then…but whatevers, same time period seems correct. A new deck comes wrapped in cellophane with the red line tearoff and the box has no seal.

Back design is minimal with a castle toplike border. Single color red/blue bordered back. Its everything the NOC deck wanted to be 40 years ahead of its time. Even the box is minimal like the black/gold crown decks.

Joker’s are those shields that you find on older casino decks. The AoS has the Friar’s club logo. You can find decks where this logo is also on the back pretty easily on Ebay. The serial number reads S 2023. According to Lee Asher‘s thing, that puts it at either 1913, 1933, 1953, 1973, or 1993. Well we know for a fact that its 1973 because we can take apart the box. What? You’re so full of yourself because you have so many copies that you’d destroy the box. Well yeah.

I dare you to do this with other decks like your Jerry’s Nugget boxes. I forget if they also had date stamps embedded in the boxes.

Well Kudos, what about the cards?

I’ve had a few decks opened and used for the last few years, and they’ve been pretty good at holding their snap. They’re full color backs from old 1970s USPC stock. Pretty stiff to begin with and hard to fan, but gets a little softer and more fannable after use.

I feel like the comments for this page will start filling up with ‘ARE THESE FOR SALE?!?!’ Will I ever release any of these for sale or auction on Ebay? Well…I was thinking if this blog hits some milestones like 100 followers, or 100,000 views or something like that maybe something will happen. Best case scenario: Giveaway. Likely scenario: list a few on ebay.

Tune in next time for another mild installment of Kudos’ stash.

–Kudos