I've got a lot of vintage playing cards sitting around in one box or another.  For some reason, if I see an interesting vintage card deck when I go out to estate sales, I end up snagging it.  Sometimes, I pick them up by the box full.  Since I am on a bit of a mission to get uncluttered, I've been listing them on eBay recently.  Some of the neatest ones I found were from a local Chevrolet dealership.  They must have given them out with a test drive or something.  They had a drawing of a car on the outside of the box and the words "1955 Chevrolet" printed across the top.  The cards themselves had the image of that year's top model (sorry, the model escapes me now).  I'll keep putting them up as I find them.

I really like to check out any type of old advertising, and they used to do a lot of it on playing cards.  I think businesses used to give out a lot more quality stuff as premiums in general.  What do we get now?  Happy Meal toys?  No thanks.  Although through my estate purchasing, I probably have 20 or 30 unopened happy meal Barbie toys from the early '90s sitting in a box somewhere around here.

A funny thing happens when I get interested in something I see on eBay.  I end up learning a lot about whatever it is.  I noticed this a lot with looking at vintage playing cards.  There are some very serious collectors who buy and sell on eBay and as I read the auctions, I ended up finding out a lot about the origins of playing cards.  For example, I learned that they originated in China and used to sometimes be decorated by hand before moving into Europe.  See?   I had no idea about any of that before I started researching this stuff!

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