United States of America

It is unclear exactly when playing cards were first introduced to the region now known as the United States. However, records confirm their use in both the Jamestown colony of Virginia and the New England colonies by the 1620s (Hargrave, History, pp. 280–281).

During the colonial era, the market was broadly dominated by imports of French-suited cards from England. A major domestic industry only fully developed in the nineteenth century, led by figures such as Andrew Dougherty in New York and the United States Playing Card Co. in Cincinnati (Keller (ed.), Catalogue, ii, pp. 112–130).

Tarot cards were not common in the United States until the twentieth century. In the late 1960s, there was an explosion of interest in Tarot, during which companies like Llewellyn, Weiser, and U.S. Games Systems began producing new mass-market editions of the Waite-Smith and Crowley-Harris Tarot decks (Kaplan, Encyclopedia, iii, pp. 152, 156; Jensen, ‘Early Waite-Smith’).

Introduction

Playing cards were introduced to America early in the days of English colonization in the seventeenth century. While the colonies relied on European imports for nearly two centuries, a significant domestic industry flourished in the nineteenth century, eventually giving rise to the largest card manufacturers in the world. The United States is also responsible for a singular contribution to the standard deck of cards: the invention of the Joker.

History

The precise date of playing cards’ arrival in the United States remains uncertain. It is possible that the French and Spanish attempts to colonize Florida in the mid-1560s introduced cards to the continent. Furthermore, Sir Walter Raleigh, who unsuccessfully attempted to colonize Roanoke in North Carolina in the 1580s, held a monopoly from Queen Elizabeth I on the sale of playing cards at the time. This suggests that cards were a known commodity in the logistical planning of English colonization (Kealey, ‘Industrial Revolution’, p. 426).

The first permanent European colony was established at Jamestown in Virginia in 1607. It is reasonable to assume that cards were introduced there either in the late 1600s or during the 1610s. By 1624, the Virginia Assembly declared that ministers were not to spend their time playing with cards or dice, clearly indicating that gaming had become a visible social issue in the colony by that time (Hargrave, History, p. 281).

Further north, cards arrived in the New England colonies either on the Mayflower in 1620 or shortly thereafter. A Plymouth Colony record from 1633 fined several people for playing cards. In these religiously censorious colonies, cards continued to be restricted and regulated for decades (Hargrave, History, pp. 280–281).

The Era of Importation and Independence

The first paper mills were not established in the English colonies until the end of the seventeenth century. Consequently, the Thirteen Colonies were entirely reliant on the importation of playing cards from England or other parts of Europe until the eighteenth century (Hargrave, History, p. 282). Because England had already adopted the French suit system (Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, Spades), these suits became dominant in America, eventually displacing other European patterns.

Local producers began to emerge in the eighteenth century. David Gairdner of Belcher’s Wharf in Boston advertised the sale of playing cards in 1751. Based on inventories from his shop, it is likely that Benjamin Franklin produced playing cards in his Philadelphia print shop, though no surviving examples have been found to confirm this (Hargrave, History, pp. 283–284; England, ‘Tools’, p. 39). In 1765, on the eve of the American Revolution, playing cards were even used as a form of admission to classes at the Philadelphia College that Franklin helped found (Hargrave, History, pp. 287–288).

While card makers existed in the Thirteen Colonies during the colonial era, their operations were local and limited. Importation from England remained the core of the market. This dynamic shifted following the American Revolutionary War; periods of conflict with the British precluded the importation of goods from London, forcing the market to rely on domestic production. Despite this necessity, English cards remained preferable to American ones for some time, and many sellers doctored American cards to make them appear as though they were imported from London (Hargrave, History, p. 302).

Industrial Expansion

The indigenous American market began to develop extensively in the nineteenth century. 400,000 packs alone were produced in 1814, a year when the United States was at war with Britain and imports from Europe were almost entirely cut off (Hargrave, History, p. 327).

A major early developer was Andrew Dougherty. Born in the north of Ireland, he moved to New York at the beginning of the mass migration of the Irish to the Americas in the 1830s and 1840s. In 1848, he established his playing-card factory in New York City. Dougherty became one of the first card makers in the USA to establish a national presence in the market (O’Donoghue (ed.), Catalogue, p. 183).

While industrialization accelerated on the East Coast, the Spanish were expanding into Texas and California through missionary activity from the late 1760s onwards. Subsequent waves of colonists and traders introduced playing cards to the West. Spanish-suited cards remained common in these regions down to—and beyond—the annexation of the region by the U.S. at the end of the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) (Mann, Collecting, p. 180).

The Evolution of Games: Poker and the Joker

European settlement in other parts of the country also influenced the history of playing cards. New Orleans was founded by the French in 1718, and settlers there brought the European game Poque to Louisiana. After the Louisiana Purchase introduced U.S. rule in 1803, Poque evolved into a slightly different game played with 52 cards. The name was anglicized to Poker. From Louisiana, it spread to Texas and up the Mississippi River, where various formats emerged during the era of the American West (‘Where did Poker Originate?’).

Poker was not the only game to emerge from an earlier European ancestor. Euchre developed in America around the middle of the nineteenth century. It derives from the Alsatian game Juckerspiel and was introduced by German migrants to Pennsylvania (Parlett, Guide, pp. 190–191).

The Alsatian game involved the use of a “Best Bower” card. This concept subsequently morphed into the Jucker or Joker. Hence was born the Joker card, which would later be exported worldwide and is now ubiquitous in 52-card decks (Parlett, Guide, pp. 190–191).

Euchre and Poker were both highly popular by the time the American Civil War broke out in 1861. The conflict fractured the playing-card industry in the USA. The Confederacy, lacking industrial capacity, fell back on supplies of cards from England; Goodalls supplied specially designed Confederate decks (Mann, Collecting, p. 181). In the North, Union decks prevailed, with card imagery often used to boost war morale (Keller (ed.), Catalogue, ii, p. 152).

The Rise of Corporate Giants

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the industrial development of America accelerated. As it did so, major playing-card companies emerged that produced cards in bulk for a national market. Many of these were New York-based companies, such as Samuel Hart & Co., Lawrence & Cohen, and the New York Consolidated Card Company (Keller (ed.), Catalogue, ii, pp. 114–121).

The foremost company to emerge in the post-Civil War era was the United States Playing Card Company (USPCC). Its first iteration was established in Cincinnati in 1867. It became enormously successful on the back of its Bicycle Playing Cards brand and a range of transformation decks issued in the late nineteenth century (Crouch, et al. (ed.), Art, pp. 274–275; Keller (ed.), Catalogue, ii, pp. 121–126).

While there were a great number of producers across the United States during the early twentieth century, the market rapidly consolidated as the USPCC bought up smaller rivals. It became the behemoth of the U.S. market. At USPCC’s height, the company was producing 100 million decks per year for both domestic and international sale and was capable of manufacturing 65 decks every minute (England, ‘Tools’, p. 47).

Despite this monopoly, there was still nuance to card production in the country. Niche and esoteric decks, such as the Church of the Light Tarot, appeared in the 1920s and 1930s (Keller (ed.), Catalogue, ii, pp. 112–167).

The Tarot Renaissance

In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States became a pivotal hub for the history of Tarot. In the early 1960s, the Simpson Printing Co. in Texas produced a limited edition run of the Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot. This was the first edition of this deck printed since Aleister Crowley published Lady Frieda Harris’s paintings in his book, The Book of Thoth, in 1944 (Kaplan, Encyclopedia, iii, pp. 152, 156).

In 1967, Llewellyn Worldwide produced the first mass-manufactured version of the Crowley-Harris pattern. Two years later, they released another variant which fixed several errors in the 1967 edition. Weiser Books (today’s Red Wheel/Weiser) began selling a version of the Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot as well in 1969, as the New Age movement led to a revival of interest in Tarot cards in America (Etteilla Foundation, ‘Crowley Thoth Tarot’).

Simultaneously, in 1968, Stuart Kaplan founded U.S. Games Systems. He quickly acquired the rights to reproduce the Waite-Smith Tarot from William Rider & Son and began producing a modern variant. This edition improved considerably on earlier, defective versions that had dominated the market in the interwar era (Jensen, ‘Early Waite-Smith’).

Llewellyn, Weiser, and U.S. Games Systems transformed the market in the USA from the late 1960s onwards. Tarot cards became a massive seller, and the industry is worth over a billion dollars today. The wider modern playing-card industry in the United States continues to be dominated by both Tarot and standard 52-card decks for Poker (‘Tarot Card Market Size’).

Sources (References)

• Crouch, Daniel, et al. (ed.). The Art of the Deal. London: Daniel Crouch Rare Books, 2023.
• Dummett, Michael. The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, 1980.
• England, Jason. ‘Tools of the Trade’. Magic Magazine, August 2010, pp. 39–48.
• Hargrave, Catherine Perry. A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Cards and Gaming. New York: Dover Publications, 1966.
• History.com Editors. ‘Where did Poker Originate?’. History, 23 August 2018.
• Jensen, K. Frank. ‘The Early Waite-Smith Tarot Editions’. The Playing Card: Journal of the International Playing-Card Society, Vol. 34, No. 1 (July – September, 2005).
• Kaplan, Stuart R. The Encyclopedia of Tarot. 4 volumes. Stamford, Connecticut: U.S. Games Systems, Inc., 1978–2005.
• Kealey, Terence. ‘The Industrial Revolution as a collective action problem: The House of Commons games patents of monopoly, November 1601’. Economic Affairs, Vol. 42 (2022), pp. 418–441.
• Keller, William B. (ed.). A Catalogue of the Cary Collection of Playing Cards in the Yale University Library. 2 volumes. New Haven: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 1981.
• Mann, Sylvia. Collecting Playing Cards. New York: Bell Publishing Company, 1966.
• O’Donoghue, Freeman M. (ed.). Catalogue of the Collection of Playing Cards Bequeathed to the Trustees of the British Museum by the Late Lady Charlotte Schreiber. London: Longmans & Co., 1901.
• Parlett, David. The Oxford Guide to Card Games. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
• Proficient Market Insights. ‘Tarot Card Market Size’. Proficient Market Insights, 20 September 2023.