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Traditional jesters, troubadours and harlequins are displayed in the collection which continues with about 75 joker cards in the first five groups.
Begin
the tour with acrobatic
jokers or see the latest additions - jugglers and minstrels. Links for the other joker groups show the quantity
of designs to be displayed.
mouseover to see card
back
From a facsimile edition of Canary
Playing Cards made for poker, printed by The New York
Consolidated Card Company of New York, NY.
The Best Bower card (above) is similar to the first joker ever printed, about 1870, for the game of Euchre. It took more than 400 years after cards first appeared in Europe before the two extra jokers were included in a standard deck of playing cards. More information is available on the Playing Card FAQ about
the origin
of the joker, plus an article exploring the symbolism
of the images.
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"Fool: also called jester, a comic entertainer whose
madness or imbecility, real or pretended, made him a source
of amusement and gave him license to abuse and poke fun at
even the most exalted of his patrons." (Encyclopedia Britannica,
1995). Goto an interesting article on the
role of the fool or the trickster.
The joker card is registered as a trademark, an opportunity for the card publisher to add something unique to their deck of cards. The original artwork can go through many changes over the years; different cultures often add their own influence to the costume and scenery.
Card makers also produce another unique card in the deck, traditionally used for taxation purposes - view several examples of the ace
of spades from a playing card collector in China.
list of joker web sites
32 playing card joker collections are online. The list can be sorted alphabetically,
number of cards,
etc. with a brief description.
The World
Web Playing Cards Museum may be the largest collection
of cards and jokers on the internet. Links to playing card
and joker web sites are listed by country - click on "collectors".
(View WWPCM with an older
browser).
supplies for
collecting
Card collecting supplies - clear plastic, 9 pocket
pages and trading card
sleeves from Ultra Pro.
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