I Love Playing Cards
When it comes to playing with cards, I don't know a lot of games, except for Poker. I have played other games here and there, but I always forget the rules and someone has to remind me before starting the game. However, this is not the case with poker. Poker is my favorite mind sport.
There is something about a deck of cards that really appeals to me. I don't know exactly what it is. Maybe it's something related to order and control. The fact that with proper skill, one can have complete control on the cards is fascinating.
There are also some interesting factoids about playing cards:
- 52 cards in a deck represent 52 weeks in a year.
- 4 suits represents 4 seasons
- 2 colors represents night and day
any many more...
My love for playing cards is not something that is developed recently. It goes back to my childhood when I used to see my grandfather playing with his set of cards. Yes, he used to play alone. I still have the deck of cards he used to play with. I have saved it, but currently it's in Indore, so I won't be able to include it's picture in this post.
Another reason I love them because I am a huge fan of the art form “Close-up Card Magic”. I don't like stage magic because you are seated a fair amount of distance from the stage, and it involves a lot of props. This is not the case with card magic. You are sitting/standing very close to your audience and all you are using is a deck of playing cards, your skilled hands and misdirection.
Some tricks require gimmicks or setup, but there are a lot of impromptu tricks as well. I am not saying this as a spectator's point of view. In my summer holidays of 2013, I became so obsessed with “sleight of hand” that I learned a lot of card tricks and ended up performing in front of a small audience in May 2013.
These are stills from the complete video that I HAVE, but will NOT upload it anywhere.
10 years later, currently I am out of practice with the tricks and only know them theoretically. If I try to perform, I will fail. I will do a show like this once more in my life where I will record it using professional high quality camera setup but like my knowledge of tricks, that idea is also theoretical. Life is not as easy as it was when I was in school.
If you like this art form, then I suggest you might want to watch the works of Bill Malone (YouTube playlist here) who is my idol when it comes to close-up card magic. His unparalleled skills coupled with his crazy sense of humor and wit is an absolute delight to watch. He is a student of the legendary “cardician” - Ed Marlo whom I consider THE ABSOLUTE BEST in this domain.
Anyway, I am getting out of track. Let me come back to the main agenda of this post.
In one of my previous posts (332 Days Later.....), I mentioned that I started a playing card collection and in another post (Living by myself* for 14 days), I mentioned that I will post a picture of my playing card collection.
I was thinking of posting this as “Behind The Artifacts” post, but not all of them a story. The ones that do, only have small ones, so I didn't do that. Some of the photos I clicked do not do justice to the beauty of the cards, so if you want, you can google the names of the decks to see high quality photos. Here is my collection so far:
These are the cards, who don't have their parent deck. These are original Bicycle cards, though. The 5 of them are used together in a magic trick.
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| 3 Jokers from the same deck |
Slim Playing Cards: These were gifted to me by my sister's husband. I haven't seen cards like these, and it sure is a unique deck in my collection. I also posted about these on Reddit and people liked it there. Here is the link to that post if you are interested in reading the comments.
Bicycle Stargazer: This was the very first Bicycle deck that I got five years ago. My sister bought it for me. In 2018, she was new at her first job and the only person who would buy me a deck costing 800+ rupees at the time. This is also the only Bicycle deck that I have played with, which is why it is very beat up. I remember me and my classmates played the game “zero to zero” during one of the events in college. I have kept the later ones in very good shape and never played with them. All my other decks are kept in a box, but not this one. This one sits at my desk as I like to fidget with it.
I think this was the first deck in the stargazer series. It received a very good response from the public, so they started to do more titles and designs. My sister's husband has the “New Moon” deck of the stargazer series, which is also very beautiful.
I will admit that this is slightly difficult to play with since the absence of traditional colors, but for me, they are meant for collecting. For playing, I use the regular ones with no fancy designs.
Bicycle Blue Rider Back: This is the standard rider back designed Bicycle playing cards. Nothing fancy here. I only have the blue one for now, but it is available in 9 other colors that I want in my collection.
Blue Rider Back Blank Cards: Unlike my others, this is not an original Bicycle deck. It has the same design, but certainly not the air cushion finish. They are cheap and printed in India. They came in a white box with nothing printed on it. I will mainly use it tricks involving blank cards and also for leaving fancy notes for people at certain times.
IT'S TIME TO PUT ON GLOVES NOW!
Bicycle Fyrebird: I got this deck on 8th September last year and again this is one of the most beautiful decks I have seen. It is red and gold. I remember my colleagues judging me like crazy when I told them that I got a 600 Rs deck of playing cards, and I can't blame them. I never handle this deck without wearing a pair of gloves. Of the two jokers that came with this deck, I gave the black and white one to a colleague of mine on her birthday due to an inside joke, and now I regret it. Some tricks require a double back card (a card that has the back design on both sides). I have original rider back Bicycle red and blue double back cards, but I purchased them separately. This deck came with a double back card included, which is pretty awesome.
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| Remaining joker with the double back |
Memento Mori Playing Cards: I fell in love with this deck of cards as soon as I saw it. I am a huge fan of the low-poly art. Till this day, I am using the low poly wallpapers designed by Justin Maller which I discovered back in 2017. The color combination on these cards is very vivid. I have seen videos of Chris Ramsay, so I had to get one of these. This is the latest addition to my collection, which I purchased on July 6th. By far the most expensive in my collection, costing 1,002 Rs. Haven't handled these without the gloves.
There is also a holographic version of this deck which is a limited edition, but I can't spend 3000+ Rs on that.
This marks the end of my small collection of playing cards. I will keep adding more decks to this collection for sure. I keep them in a box for now, but if I buy just two more decks, I would also have to get a new box as all decks would not fit in my current box.
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| Entire collection so far |
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| Entire collection in the box |
I have a lot of Bicycle cards. I know that there are better brands also available, but I still am a fan of Bicycle because they have a very big product catalog. So from a collector's point of view, there are a lot of options.
When I started collecting, my plan was to buy a new deck every month. I am not sticking with this plan because even though I can spend 500-1000Rs every month on this, I better not. This is an expensive hobby and there is no stopping point. Now I also have to contribute to house expenses and my personal investments.
For this post, I checked my order history and realized that it's almost the end of the year, and I only bought the Memento Mori. I got Fyrebird last year. I have been very inconsistent in keeping up this hobby because of the other things that have been going on. I will buy one more this year and from the next year, I will probably come up with a system where I buy one every x months or something like that. I have my eyes on so many that I want, but I will not mention them here. I would directly buy them and show them to you when I write about this topic next time. I will write about my collection when it becomes double of what it is now. I don't know when will it happen.
Ending this post for now.
When the time is right, I will write about my coin collection 🪙
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