* Playing cards. Crimean War pack, Germany or Belgium?, circa 1860, a complete deck of 52 stencil coloured engraved playing cards (French suits), double-ended courts portraying named leaders of the involved countries, including Russia, Turkey, Sardinia, France and England, each ace depicting two relevant scenes (with blue colouring only), generally toned and soiled, some cards rubbed, occasional stains, 5D with small (not quite full-thickness) loss, corners lightly worn, edges gilt, versos red dotted pattern, each card 85 x 57 mm, together with: Swedish standard pattern, Stockholm: Alexander Boman, circa 1880, a complete deck of 52 stencil coloured lithographed playing cards (French suits), double-ended Scandinavian type courts, named kings & queens, AH with maker's ink stamp and Swedish tax stamp, soiled, lightly toned, pip cards a little bowed, AD with small corner loss, rounded corners, versos blue fibres, each card 89 x 61 mm, with lower half (only) of original two-part box (somewhat soiled and worn), bearing maker's name and advertisements, plus: Russian Historical pack, 2nd edition, St. Petersburg; Imperial Orphanage Printing Plant, 1898, the complete double deck set of 2 x 52 chromolithographed playing cards (French suits), double-ended courts designed by Nikolay Karazin, both AD with printed stamp of the Imperial Foundling Hospital, couple of corner creases, one 3D creased, rounded corners, versos swallows on blue or pink, contained together in original two-part box, inner sleeve lacking base, outer sleeve darkened and somewhat soiled, with one join split, titled front panel with emblem of pelican feeding its young, with 26 other decks: 12 Russian (mostly 20th century); 5 Swedish, (2 circa 1875 - one incomplete, the others 20th century); 3 Belgian (one circa 1880 by van Genechten with wrapper, the others 20th century); two Belgian or German decks - Circus Rummy (20th century) & Paris pattern unusual variant (circa 1870, two kings holding a harp); 4 further 20th century decks - 2 East Africa souvenir decks (by Modiano of Italy, and Nintendo of Japan), and 2 Japanese (one Yamaha, one Suntory Whisky), plus 6 courts from a Belgian sample book, named in Bulgarian, with a Bulgarian wrapper, a quantity of cards from each deck mounted with photo corners onto 17 display boards (one double and folding), some encapsulated in clear plastic (none examined out of boards), the remainder in plastic bags, some with original box or part box, the boards 54.5 x 40.5 cm and smallerQTY: (30)NOTE:Provenance: Collection of Dudley Ollis.First item: See Cary GER 402 for a deck with two cards (of the three cards illustrated) almost identical to this pack, except the characters are not named. Third item: The jacks and kings, except the king of clubs (a stray from XP5 pattern?), are from the most frequent type of XP1 pattern. The queens are non-standard.
