April 2019

 

 

I've been busy sorting out all kinds of things except playing cards this month. Miriam had always taken care of the administration here and I had trouble finding all the different papers for dealing with the administrative aftermath of her demise. So there wasn't any time to proceed with entering the rest of the Baltic decks in our collection. Or maybe my head wasn't in the right mind set either. Anyway, also no new decks were bought.
I didn't want to present another Baltic deck here, so I went through the other finds of last year, came across this one and thought it would make a nice change. So now "for something completely different"..............

 

About a year ago I bought this lot on the French eBay. It's a complete set of 32 advertising cards, published by Louit Frères & Co from Bordeaux to advertise their chocolate on the front of each card and probably their latest product, "Tapioca-Louit", on the backs. These kind of cards were very popular in France during the first quarter of the 20th century and many companies have published whole series of them. Only some of them have playing cards on them. They were added to or inserted in their products by different companies and complete series could be collected by buying a lot of chocolate, coffee or whatever their product was. Or swapping of course.

The mainly advertised product probably was chocolate, as we've heard them nicknamed "chocolate cards" by some collectors or sellers. The cards are usually somewhat larger than playing cards. The cards from this set measure about 70 by 110 mm. The set could be used for fortune telling. Each card shows a different playing card with a caption to indicate the meaning. In this set the meaning is illustrated in a comical way by a caricatural drawing of a fitting situation. The cards were lithographically printed by the Imprimerie Courbe - Rouiet from Dole-du-Jura. The playing cards have the standard French pattern, so they were not the reason to present this set here. But those cute drawings were!

 

 

Bad woman

Business man

Bad person

 

 

 

Powerful man and benefactor

Young man to marry

Good and sensible woman

 

 

 

Fast forward

Joy at home

CLICK ANY ACE TO SEE ALL THE PIP CARDS

Big news

Joy and a nice gift

 

 

 

Excellent results

Flattery, courtiers

Great success in the world

 

 

 

Gossip

Dangerous man

The postman

 

The set consists of 32 cards, all with this advertising back.

 

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