Just like the "Joker of the Month" in the Jokers section we will select a "Deck of the Month" from all the decks that we could add to our collection during that month. It will be what we consider our best find. We've started this section in April 2007 and without any doubt we can say here that over the years there will be antique, vintage and modern decks shown on these pages. Age, design and value of the chosen decks may be very different each time.

March 2026

	After I had decided to sell some more Scandinavian decks in the Bargains section, I went through some boxes with decks to sell. Besides one Finnish deck I found some Swedish, Norwegian and Danish decks. This deck was one of the latter and I immediately recognized the designs of the courts and remembered why it was special for collectors of Dutch playing cards. This made the choice for this spot suddenly much easier: there was a Dutch connection to be exposed.

So it's pure coincidence that this deck was made by the same manufacturer as last month's: Kruckow from Copenhagen, Denmark. The deck was first published as "Danske Spillekort" around 1904 and has known several later variations. When I started doing my own research, I found that the deck below is described in Jensen as 9.04. Because the previous owner had described it as 9.01 (c 1904), I checked my finding with Ali Jerremalm and he concurred. Because Ali has this variation in a hombre version, he couldn't say for sure that a 52 cards deck of this variation didn't come with a joker. But it's likely that it didn't. The first joker accompanying this pattern is shown by Jensen in variation 9.08.

Variation 9.04 can easily be recognized by the cream-yellow background inside the outline of the design. It's the only variation with this feature. Ali's guess was that this variation probably dates from around 1910 and who am I to doubt his opinion.

For the promised Dutch connection click the queen with the Dutch flag, but first check out these fine printed courts.