Thieving Tom can be found in another Old Maid deck, our 32nd. There’s no date, but it seems to come from Milton Bradley, unless it’s in the wrong box. The other pairs are Hasty Horace, Mrs. Biggs, Boo! (a boy frightening an old man), Mistah White (I’m afraid so), A Phool, Mike Angelo, Susie Sweet, […]

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The “Home History Game for Boys and Girls” was issued by Milton Bradley in 1909. It contains 105 cards, printed with events from history. Players try to collect cards from the same day of the week. The choice of historical incidents is idiosyncratic, as the above card shows. Most are from the 19th century, and […]

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This card comes from a small “Matching Pairs” game, sold as a party favor by Unique Industries in Philadelphia. The paired cards show simple objects and animals, drawn in this clear and colorful style. Instructions are included in both English and French. (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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This version of “Authors” was published by Milton Bradley, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It promises a “Revised Edition with Fine Portraits of Standard Writers.” I welcome the chance to admire Wilkie Collins, who doesn’t often make it into the canon. The others in this set are Shakespeare, Scott, Macaulay, Dickens, […]

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Mrs. Dr. Anna Tomey is part of an old Old Maid deck from Spear’s games. She looks quite elegant and competent, I think. Here’s the Old Maid, who is much the worse for wear. . In fact, the previous owner designated another member of the deck, Miss Idylla Reeding, as the Old Maid, and sketched […]

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I usually post these card games in appreciation of the anonymous artists who designed them. This one is an exception; it’s a 1927 game of “Gasoline Alley,” which I suspect was drawn by Frank King himself. There are four suits of thirteen cards each; I guess you could play any standard card game with them. […]

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George Eliot appears in this old (and unusually large) version of “Authors.” The set I found seems to be complete, but came with no box, so there’s no information on date or publisher. In addition to Eliot, the pantheon here consists of Tennyson, Thackeray, Emerson, Scott, Dickens, Irving, Longfellow, Cooper, Hawthorne, Whittier, Holmes, Shakespeare, and […]

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We have another version of “Authors,” from Fairchild. There’s no date, but I would guess that it’s from the ’40s. Joel Chandler Harris, popular at one time for his black dialect stories, much less popular now, makes a rare appearance in the literary pantheon. His fellow writers are: Cornelia Meigs, Francis William Rolt-Wheeler, Louisa May […]

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Fairchild came out with “Cities” in 1945. Each city formed a three card set, which players competed, no doubt hotly, to complete. The cities were all in the U.S., and each was worth a different number of points: New York City (12), Chicago (11), Philadelphia (10), Detroit (9), Los Angeles (8), Baltimore (7), Cleveland (6), […]

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“Frank Buck’s Bring ‘Em Back Alive Game” was published by Fairchild in 1937. Frank Buck had a long career as an animal collector, with ancillary forays into writing and acting. He collected animals for circuses and zoos, his motto being “bring ’em back alive.” This deck has striking illustrations of animals, to be collected in […]

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