Last week, I made an interesting discovery at my local Walgreens. All this time, it seems I've been looking in the wrong place for the old style Studs! Instead of looking in the playing cards section where they only stock the new Studs, I should have checked the aisles with the christmas merchandise and stocking stuffers. Next to packs of crayons, I found tons of old style Studs, with both red & blue backs, jumbo and regular indexes, all marked a dollar each. Needless to say, I stocked up, not knowing how long this bonanza would last.

I opened the case, I discovered only half the cards were bikes. The other half was a design that contained some of the motifs that you see on the back of Studs today, yet the arrangement and overall design was very different. The Ace of Spades was marked as coming from a Studs pinochle deck, but the faces of the court card are not like Studs at all, but instead very similar to faces used on Hoyle Shellback and Mavericks. Does anyone know when Studs used this design variation, and help me date these cards?

Thanks,

Paul

I'm sorry, for some reason the top half of my last post was missing, so here it is again:

I have a mystery involving some Stud cards that I hope someone can help me solve.

Recently I aquired what was suppose to be a standard deck of old 808 red Rider back Bicycles fom an auction on Ebay. I opened the case, I discovered only half the cards were bikes. The other half was a design that contained some of the motifs that you see on the back of Studs today, yet the arrangement and overall design was very different. The Ace of Spades was marked as coming from a Studs pinochle deck, but the faces of the court card are not like Studs at all, but instead very similar to faces used on Hoyle Shellback and Mavericks. Does anyone know when Studs used this design variation, and help me date these cards?

Thanks,

Paul