The International Playing Card Society Millennium Members Pack
Kishor Gordhandas
13 June 2009, 04:24Centuries ago someone came up with a brilliant idea. It turned out to be a concept as profound as the invention of the wheel, the microscope, or the telephone. Less complicated than electricity, computer technology, or travelling to the moon, yet always guaranteed to work anywhere on earth, without fuel or batteries. All it needs is the human brain and some luck. It is smaller and lighter than a book, and in a universal language. Since the pages are constantly changing it is a never ending story. It causes all kinds of emotions, from happiness and outrageous excitement to misery and depression. A battle without causalities, it can make rich men poor and poor men rich. It unites players all over the world regardless of origin, creed, language and religion.
We do not know the name of the inventor, or when exactly they were created, yet at the start of the third millennium the International Playing Card-Society, London (IPCS) commemorated the anonymous inventor of playing cards by commissioning a special deck from its members. This pack of cards is dedicated to the person whose idea sill brings so much joy and excitement to countless people all over the world.
The IPCS Member’s Pack offers just a glimpse of the rich variety of playing cards produced over many centuries. The pack is not a review of playing-card history, nor is it meant to be used as a pack of playing cards. Each card has been specially picked by selected members of the IPCS from their private collections. Each contributor also wrote a commentary about their selected card for the booklet given along with the pack.
Obviously, in the majority of cases, the cards selected by respective members represent the cards of their particular countries. This way the pack is permanent record of the countless different enthusiasms, passions and interests which members of the IPCS have in playing-cards at the commencement of the third millennium. The size of these playing cards is 10 cm. X 6.5 cm while the accompanying booklet is 12 cm. X 9.0 cm. and contains 40 pages. Along the bottom of the extra card, and the sides of the Box is written the following: 52 cards plus five jokers Limited edition of 999 copies. Not to be sold
In January 2000 I received a letter from the International Playing Card Society’s Council Chairman requesting me to select any interesting Four of Spades card from the various decks of cards in my collection for inclusion in the Members Pack and submit the details to the designer of the pack in The Netherlands. This Member Pack was to be printed and published around Oct/Nov. 2000. I am the only Indian collector of playing cards and have been a member of IPCS for the last over 25 years. But as I saw later when I received my copy of this unusual pack of cards,another member, Mr. Revd. Jeffery Hopewell from United Kingdom, had also selected an Indian card for the pack. The card he selected was the 6 of Diamonds, originally from the pack of hand painted deck of 52 cards, made in Sawantwadi, in late Nineteenth Century. 
I submitted my choice, the four of Spades, and sent the details as required. The pack I had selected for representation has two objectives; a game for fun and to be educational aspect. The basic pattern of the numeral cards is a central picture illustrating a word that is written in Marathi across the top right of the card while the letter with which the word begins is shown on the top left. On the bottom left of the card is the number corresponding to the value of the numeral playing card drawn in the bottom right corner but there are no Arabic number indices on the cards. The Marathi letter, or letter combination, is shown at the top left and the letter and the number are printed in the opposite colour to that of the suit sign. This colour scheme, also presents on the numeral cards, adds considerably to the artistic balance of the overall design of the card. Thus, the child learns to associate visually both the letter and the word and also the number and the playing card and so learn, with the same pack, the art of reading, writing and arithmetic while at the same time enjoying a game! It was for these reasons that I selected this particular Children’s Alphabetical Playing cards pack, and the four of Spades, which was the card given to me to select, turned out to be the train, an interesting picture! The idea for manufacture of this type of playing cards, its design and interesting theme, Alphabetical Pictures, was brainchild of someone nearly 70 years ago!
The original card was the four of Spades from the Children’s Alphabetical Playing Cards, Ca. 1940, of 52 cards and two Jokers and Box were printed in Pune. Also attached is the half page no. 14 of this booklet, showing the FOUR OF SPADES and its description given my me to the designer. As a contributor to this unusual Millennium pack, I and all other contributors received one pack plus one extra Members Pack, which included such oddities as samples from a Doris Day deck, one called “Our Modern Army”, plus its own special commemorative Joker.
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