Expansive collection of playing card decks, from a single collector, bearing witness to nearly 175 years of transportation history, technological innovation, race interpretation, advertising trends, international travel (U.S., African, Asian, Canadian, Cuban, European, Hawaiian, Russian) and politics, depicted on 709 decks of playing cards.
Collector Hyman Kaplan (d. 2018) was an engineer and author (Paradise Denied, 2010), as well as a partner in Advisor Associates, a consulting business of psychics hired by companies, sometimes secretly, to assist with decision-making. He began collecting playing card decks in 1982. Over the next nearly two decades he amassed this enormous collection, including an astonishing variety of decks ranging from the traditional (19th-century red-and-blue bicycle decks), to the exceptional (souvenir decks from the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, and the 1933 World’s Fair/“Century of Progress/53 Views of the Fair” complete with the rare “Gorilla Joker”); from hundreds of decks issued by airplane and train manufacturers, to decks commemorating the Edison Lamp and the Brother Typewriter, to decks featuring racial stereotypes such as an “Eskimo Glamour Girl” and a Black girl eating a watermelon advertising the “Cotton Belt [Train] Route.”
Together the decks can be viewed as a resource for research into both design and cultural history, with a focus on transportation, innovation, and travel. Its importance as a collection far exceeds its square footage, which is inherently small on account of the format of its contents.
709 decks, of which many photographic, showing scenery, art, advertisements, and/or transportation, with numerous additional jokers in separate containers. In total: 14 storage boxes (of which 12 gray cloth cassette storage boxes measuring 16.34 x 9.25 x 3.54 in) containing more than 35,000 cards. Varying condition including many decks unopened and still in wrappers. Almost all contained in original boxes, some double decks in folding boxes, in varying condition (many worn at the edges), a large number with plastic wrappers or remnants of wrappers, and stamps or remnants of stamps.
The decks can be divided broadly into the following categories, in order of majority:
• Transportation: Train, Plane, (Steam-)ship. Of trains alone, we find more than 50 companies/routes represented: see list below.
• Cultural Interest/Advertising History: Scenery, Art, Architecture, Fashion, Diet
• Technology: Lamps, Typewriters, Pan-Am Exposition 1901, World’s Fair 1933
• Race: Native American, Eskimo, Black
• Politics: American, International
• Unusual Format: Braille, Circular, Fortune-telling/Tarot, Miniature
Some standout decks in the collection include:
Maxfield Parrish “Enchantment” deck for Edison Mazda lamps, 1926; Russian 1917 red and blue decks “Extra Fine Rococo Style” N403 and N404; “Gypsy Witch” Fortune-telling deck; “Souvenir Playing Cards” for numerous locations including the “Golden West”; a deck picturing the Lahaina-Kaanapala & Pacific Railroad in Maui, HI; “ ‘Chief Quanah,’ Last of the Comanches” deck from Quanah, Acme & Pacific Railway; “ ‘Esiuol,’ An Eskimo Glamour Girl in Native Costume” deck; views of Havana deck; Braille deck 88F Rider Back; “The Year Round” circular deck; African Steamship Company deck by Elder, Dempster & Co. (Liverpool); “Pack of Diets” by UK Registered Dieticians; Art Deco Moth and Butterfly decks ca. 1940; Brother Electronic Office Typewriters deck for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics; Les Modes Godey deck; unopened decks advertising “English Ovals” cigarettes; bubble double deck standard playing cards 1929 by John Wannamaker, unopened with stamps and labels; “Coke” [Coca-Cola] deck from a print by Michael English (Motif Editions, 1970); Norman Rockwell art decks; “Famous Views of Hong Kong” and a deck from “The Former Imperial Palace of China”; Brown Derby “City of Hope” deck featuring Hollywood caricatures; John Kerry Presidential Deck; “Wireless” Pinochle K1803 deck; California Zephyr Vista-Dome train deck with full-color photographic views of the West Coast; “Cotton Belt Route” deck showing a Black girl eating a watermelon, with original matching box; “Old English Curve Cut Pipe Tobacco” deck in original box; many “Waddington’s Views of England” decks; and at least 25 decks featuring photographic “Views of North America,” ca. 1900-1950, in the original colorful cloth boxes stamped in gilt.
The current owner, Kaplan’s stepdaughter, who inherited the collection following Kaplan’s death, is not aware of any previous cataloguing. Some of the decks retain post-it notes with bibliographical designations in Kaplan’s hand, but not many.
See: M. Margulis, “House of Cards. Collector has amassed more than 1,800 unusual decks [this collection],” in Courier Post: This Week (Cherry Hill, NJ), Thursday, May 15, 1997, pp. 1-2 [cover story, misspelling Kaplan’s name “Caplan”].
Train companies represented in the collection:
FRISCO
“Iron Horses of the West” AT&SFRR
“Piggyback” New Orleans
“The Skunk” Fort Bragg
Algoma Central
Amtrak
Atlantic Coast Line
Auto Train
B&O
Bangor/Aroostook
Burlington Northern
Burlington Vista Dome Zephyr
C&O
California Zephyr
Canadian Pacific
Chesapeake and Ohio
Chicago Great Western
Chicago Northwestern
Chicago Outer Belt
Conrail
Cotton Belt Route
CSX
Denver and Rio Grande Western
Illinois Central
Illinois Central Gulf
Indian Pacific
Kansas City Southern
L&N (Louisville and Nashville)
Liberty Ltd – Washington/Chicago
Long Island Rail Road
Milwaukee Road/Hiawatha
Missabe
Missouri Pacific
MKT (Missouri, Kansas, Texas)
MOPAC
New York-New Haven-Hartford
Nickel Rate Road
Norfolk and Southern
Norfolk and Western
Northern Pacific
NY Central
Ontario National
Ontario Northland
Panama Ltd
Pennsylvania Railroad
Powhatan Arrow/Pocohontas
Rock Island
Santa Fe
Seaboard Coast Line
Seaboard System
Soo Line
Southern Pacific
Union Pacific
Wabash
Wellington Silver Star (Australia)
Western Carloading Company
Wisconsin Central
Offered by Zoe Abrams Rare Books
$9,750
To purchase, contact zoe@zoethebookseller.com
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