Talk:Bicycle Playing Cards

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1 Technical Specifications
2 Special Cards
3 Trivia
4 Artwork
- 4.1 Possible images

[edit] Technical Specifications

At first, they have a "ripple" surface, which makes them glide perfectly when shuffling and dealing. You don't get this with european cards.
They're B8, according to ISO 216
Then they have a strong synthetic coating, which makes them very durable.

--Reuben Honigwachs 22:35, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Special Cards

Besides the Ace, there are other special cards.

One Joker always has the guarantee and returning procedure to it.
There's a blank cutting card in the pack.
There are Bicycle cards with calanders, too. This doesn't seem to be regular.

--Reuben Honigwachs 22:35, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

This is a translation from magic-gambling.de, where there is also an animated GIF with old cards:

In the year of 1881 the Russell & Morgan Company (today United States Playing Card Company) started producing playing cards. Although this business ran well, they saw the necessity of constantly producing new card designs with punchy product names. Because penny-farthings were popular at that time, they decided to give the new series (No. 808) in 1885 the name BICYCLE. Through their high quality standards and low price they rapidly became popular worldwide.

At the beginning, the BICYCLE playing cards were only available with four different backprints (Old Fan and Oak Leaf 1885, Rider 1887 and Wheel #1 1887), but the the number grew up to luscious 82 until 1947, when the last back was published with Leaf. Though, a lot of them have been single print runs. Some of them were for export only and therefore never available in the US. Next to the 82, there were an amount of special editions (Christmas, Olympics and others) and also promotional cards.

The most BICYCLE playing cards were printed with blue and red backs. Until 1927 there were additional 17 series with brown and green flipsides. Between 1906 and 1908 there were four backsides even two-color prints (green-red and blue-brown). The design of the ace of spades, which carried the trademark BICYCLE from the beginning on and which later withheld the serial no. 808, was changed according to the Zeitgeist. Up till today there are six different variations. Also the Joker, which first showed a cycling man, then later a cycling king, was changed six times.

Magicians prefer BICYCLE playing cards with the Rider-back, because of the available trick cards and the “small packet tricks”, as well as the League back “One Way-design”, which is recognizable from far away and was preferred by Theodore Annemann. --Reuben Honigwachs 01:12, 26 March 2006 (UTC)