JANUARY 2012

Winter hasn't shown itself here until the last two days. We have a prolonged fall, with plenty of storm and rain, but every once in a while there were some sunny days too. Temperatures haven't really been below zero, except for an occasional night and these last two days. So the roads were clear and we were ready to go, but....... there weren't any interesting markets until the last two weekends. We visited a bric-a-brac market in Amsterdam and Joop had to wait until the last weekend for the monthly flea market in Utrecht. In Amsterdam Miriam bought a nice Florentin leather box, of course with a playing card motif. It held two Piatnik decks, but those were only good to play with. Utrecht had to bring a special find to surpass the joker that we received on January 19 and it didn't.

We bought several non-standard decks on eBay for our collection and some of them had great jokers, so there was an interesting short list with a French joker, illustrated by James Hodges, an antique one from the US and a cute modern Belgian one. But this time we also bought a deck, just because of the joker. It was advertised as an unusual deck, but the pictures showed court cards from the Belgian-Genovese pattern. For the American seller not your everyday stuff, but here in the Netherlands quite usual.
For us the only unusual card shown was the joker. Never seen it before and it was love at first sight. The maker remains unknown, but is probably Belgian or maybe even French. Date? Probably 1950's. The deck nor the box gave a name or a hint in any direction. Still, we're happy to share this gnome-like figure with you here.

The winter lasted only 10 days, so now it's back to the usual rain and storm again. But....trains are running on schedule and the roads are accessible again too. Due to a misunderstanding here, we had to miss the collectors meeting in Brussels. The flea market in Utrecht was in the last weekend again, but we were almost certain that we wouldn't find a joker there that would surpass our chosen one. And we were right about that.
We won a good number of decks on eBay. Not all of them were young enough to hold a joker and those who were didn't have a joker that could compete with this month's chosen one.
The joker came with our very first celluloid deck. Over the last few years we had seen such a deck only a few times on eBay, but now we were able to win one there at an affordable price. 

These celluloid cards date from 1928 and they were advertised as "will last indefinitely". But celluloid cards were never a great success, mainly because in playing the colour print wore off relatively fast. But they were quite inflammable too.

Thanks to our friend Larry from "Wrigley Ville" we can show you a similar joker, which mentions the "Piroxloid Products Corp." above the figure and "New York USA" at the bottom. Both were obviously made by the same manufacturer, only the name of the company was changed. Both are dated as 1928.

There were two events this month. Mid March there was the General Collectors Fair and a week later the usual monthly flea market. Both were held in the Veemarkthallen in Utrecht and both for the last time there. The former cattle market will be torn down and houses will be build there. From April on these events will have to be held elsewhere, but it's becoming clear that the monthly flea market won't return anywhere near Utrecht. After going there for more than 10 years Joop will miss the ambiance and the atmosphere of the Veemarkthallen.

But there's always eBay and the Dutch auction site. The latter didn't bring anything special, but eBay was again a great source. As our sales there went very well, there was some money to spend too and we got a few nice antique decks and a few nice artist decks too. The latest Elaine Lewis transformation deck commemorates the 100th anniversary of the launching of the Titanic. The deck was supposed to be send out in April, but we were lucky to receive the deck on the 22nd of this month. So there were some interesting jokers to chose from anyway.

But -as a tribute- this month's joker comes from one of the last decks that were found in the Veemarkthallen. It came with a Dondorf No 243 Poker Patience deck and it shows the well-known figure which can be found in other Dondorf decks too. BUT...... have you ever seen one with a text below the figure? 

The largest collectors fair in the Netherlands was held from Friday 13 - Sunday 15. We were both there on Friday and Saturday. Miriam found a rare football quartet deck by SN that we didn't have yet, so our weekend was already successful within a few hours. Of course we did find some other nice decks there, but nothing could top Miriam's find.

The next weekend was the Dutch Collectors Meeting, it was the 50th meeting in 25 years. But this anniversary wasn't as happy as it should have been. A good number of the familiar collectors didn't show up and there were hardly any visitors from outside. Also the number of collectors with decks to offer is slowly diminishing with every meeting. So most of the sellers were complaining about their (lack of) sales, except for one. He had stopped collecting and was selling his decks at bargain prices. We had a table next to him, so we bought a good number of decks from him to resell, just like some other collectors.

But this joker wasn't in any of these decks. It came from eBay, with an interesting designed deck of souvenir cards from Chicago. The deck was made by John J. O'Callaghan in 1930. Besides the Joker there's a "C" in the opposite corners. At first we thought it could mean "clown", but when we saw that there was a small comma above the C, we figured that the rectangle should be seen as an O, thus making O'C. So it's probably a sort of logo for O'Callaghan. Still....a not often seen joker!