Musical Jokers and some Dogs

The top two jokers are a simple line drawing of a jester with a trumpet.  It's from a very beautiful custom deck created by Wayne, a Baltimore music teacher. The other cards in the deck are illustrated with images of different instruments and have encoded in musical notation the number of the cards.  It's an interesting idea.  He sells them under the name Nana-Pie.

The bottom two jokers are of man's best friend and the art exxagerates the difference in perspective when you look at dogs' noses from different angles.  The deck is copyright artist International  and is called: The DOB Artist Collection.

Jesters and their Baubles

Here are two pairs of jokers.  Like so many decks, there are two jokers; one in black and white, the other in color.

The two top jokers have nice artwork of jesters holding cards and leaning on a ball. The back of the deck says  Beaver Creek in Colorado.  I fear that the scan of these jokers is a little fuzzy.

The lower two have two jesters decorated with the four suits (clubs, hearts, diamonds, and spades) holding their baubles.  Baubles? Yes, I believe that the name for a jester's wand on which there is a little model of the jester's head is a bauble.

And I'll quote Wikipedia:

A bauble was originally a stick with a weight attached, used in weighing a child's toy, but especially the mock symbol of office carried by a court jester. This fool's bauble was a baton terminating in a figure of Folly with cap and bells, and sometimes having a bladder fastened to the other end. Subsequently it became a term for anything trivial or childishly folly.More recently the term means a virtually worthless decorative object.

Each of these four playing card jokers are quite different. The shoe one on the top left is from a new shoe deck. The back (see the joker playing card back below) is an array of women's shoes.  The joker carries the message that:

A Child's first steps are taken in sensible shoes that can become cherished momentoes when bronzed.

Frankly, that's a weird one to me. First of all, my kids all took their first steps barefoot. Secondly, does anyone really bronze old baby shoes? Who and why?

What can I say about the others?

The Mars M&M marketing people have had a really great few decades. Once they realized that melting in your mouth, not in your hands was not the be-all and end-all of marketing, they have personified the little M&Ms in a vast number of ways.  From the recent edgy commercials where the grumpy M&M is staring at a little pretzel that apparently is going to be stuck up inside him, to  four foot stand-up M&Ms in the supermarkets, they've been saturating us with their brand and their energetic broad diversifications into rice-based M&Ms, peanut butter M&Ms, mint M&Ms, almond-centered M&Ms, and even the pretzel-filled M&Ms. The M&M playing cards were bought at an M&M store just off Times Square in NYC in 2009.

Not much to say about the Mexican-themed joker or the spooky lady other than I really like them!

Inlaid Joker Boxes

I bought the little one of these boxes (the faded one)  in southern Spain in Dec 1987.

I acquired the second one on the Amalfi Coast in Italy in 2011.

I keeps jokers in them that need to be added to the collection. Its the second place place for them after they've been in my wallet for a few weeks.

A collection of jokers - Nine jokers

Jokers with Balloons and Men Standing Around

Trying to put text next to these jokers is a painful exercise for me since it reminds me that I have never properly curated the collection.

Where did these jokers eache come from?

What deck, what era, what manufacturer. There's so much that could and should be done with this collection.

The best observation that I can make about these jokers is that there are three old balloons and then some men.

What a joke!

Joker Collections, Playing Card Joker Websites and People

Note - This is my second post on this topic of referencing other existing websites about jokers. http://jokercollection.blogspot.com/2009/01/joker-collections-others.html was my previous post. Neither of these posts reflects much real research.  In looking at these sites, I notice that many are out of date, not kept up, and have lots of bad links to other sites that are defunct.  And I noticed that nobody yet has references this little blog.  Heh, I'm here!    : - <

52 Plus Joker   http://www.52plusjoker.org/    This site is a club with membership dues dedicated to collecting cards. it's $20/ year and includes a magazine. I think I'll join. 

Playing-card History http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~daf/i-p-c-s.org/faq/history.php - The history of playing-cards is shown in the following series of pages, which were written by Ron Decker. Ron was curator of the museum (currently closed) at the United States Playing Card Co and is particularly interested in tarot cards. An email is listed there: faq@i-p-c-s.org  

A digital museum of collecting http://www.dotpattern.com/gamecard/jokers/  - Another interesting site: Traditional jesters, troubadours and harlequins are displayed in the collection which continues with about 75 joker cards in the first five groups.  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).  This seems to be part of a digital museum of collecting, perhaps inactive.


Alta Carta The Alternative for the Playing Card Collector - http://www.altacarta.com/english/goal.html
These web pages were created for the playing card collectors who want to extend their collection. Of course also people are welcome who do not collect cards, but can offer something for sale. Playing cards are offered here for trade and sale. ... "Alta Carta" just seeks contact to collectors. On the other hand in these organisations culture and research is the most essential part of the activities and what concerns the enlargement of ones personal collection is practically ignored....We do thank you for taking the time to visit these pages. We would be delighted to welcome you again. Alta Carta  January/May 2005

http://a_pollett.tripod.com/ Andy's Card Collections