Historic Cards and Games

[mikekn]

On my way out of the house this morning, I spotted a package on our front step (it must have been delivered while we were out last night). It was from Christie's, and contained the catalog for an upcoming auction they are holding in June:
Historic Cards and Games: The Stuart and Marilyn Kaplan Collection

About a third of the 300 pages are tarot decks, including a single card from the mid-15th century (the rest all being 18th century or later). They've also got several books from the 16th century on up, but (thankfully for my budget), none of them jump out as useful to period gaming research. Still it's a pretty cool catalog - lots of example of early playing cards (just not as early as I want)

Comments

[kandy-elizabet.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'm still groking on the whole part where you get Christies' catalogs! Very cool :)

[mikekn]

Heh, not a big deal really. I heard about the auction earlier and called in an order for the catalog. I've gotten a few auction catalogs or museum show books if I think they will be interesting or useful.

[mikekn]

Check out this flyer:
http://www.52plusjoker.org/home/christiesflyer.pdf

The card is on one of the pages.

[mikekn]

They recently put up a more detailed image at:
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/LotFinderImages/D47401/D4740172a.jpg

[jducoeur]

Quite neat. I haven't gotten that catalog yet, which is probably just as well for my checkbook. I'm actually a bit surprised that only a third of it is tarot decks, given that it was Kaplan's specialty...

[mikekn]

They got a lot of non-tarot decks, card games, books, game boxes and trump suit indicators as well. It is a pretty nice mix of things, just mostly outside of the SCA period.