Today read several words about another decks produced by two brothers Dan and Dave (The D&D Playing Card Co.). This is a set (pair) of playing card decks – Vintage Plaid Playing Cards: Casual California Blue Deck and Striking Arizona Red Deck. Two decks from two brothers… it is quite symbolic 🙂 Both decks were printed by USPCC in 2011.

These are not the first decks from D&D mentioned on pages of this blog. You can find other decks and additional information about the D&D Playing Card Co. on it.

“For us, these cards bring back fond memories of childhood camping trips with our grandfather. Watching him pitch a tent, reel in a fish, and bring fire ablaze under a starry night were magical moments we never forgot. In honor of those days by the river and nights under the stars, we are proud to offer these new playing cards.” ~ Dan and Dave Bucks.

The deck: 52 playing cards + 2 Jokers + 2 Information cards. Poker size. Playing cards are printed on a premium stock and have a Cambric finish (“embossed”).

Casual California Blue tuck case has brown, blue and cream colours. Striking Arizona Red tuck case has red, cream and “dark khaki” (looks like some mixture of green, khaki and dark grey) colours. All sides of tuck cases with the exception of backs have special embossing imitating leather.

These playing cards have a little bit strange combination of its names and inscriptions on its tuck cases. In accordance with the D&D’s page dedicated to them this pair or set of decks has the name “Vintage Plaid Playing Cards”. The full names of each deck mentioned on the page as “Casual California Blue” and “Striking Arizona Red“. At the same time you won’t find these names on both tuck cases. Both tuck cases have other identical names on them “U.S. REGULATION Playing Cards”.

As a rule bottom parts of tuck cases for USPCC playing cards have a lot of information. But even these parts of the tuck cases don’t have above mentioned full original names of the decks.

Left sides of tuck cases state that these are “FINE PLAYING CARDS FOR GENTLEMEN” and point sequence numbers of the decks – Casual California Blue Deck is the first one and Striking Arizona Red Deck is the second one in this set (pair).

Right sides of tuck cases name the company and its place of residence.

Upper parts of tuck cases point that these playing cards were meant for poker and repeat sequence numbers of the decks. Seals are custom but as simple as their advice – “PLAY FAIR”. It can be also an appeal taking into account that such kind of back design as was used for these playing cards is one of the best for marking 😉

So these decks were inspired by a vintage aesthetic, playing card history and brothers’ memory. It is obvious that both back designs of these decks are based on the historic Bicycle brand Arizona Plaid back design. In accordance with Mrs. Robinson’s Bicycle Playing Card Collector’s Handbook it was one of the first Bicycle brand back designs which had two colour combinations. It was firstly released in 1906. There were two different original colour combinations: red – green and brown – blue.

Taking into account the above mentioned I actually don’t know why Arizona Red became the second deck in this set (pair). But this can’t be a tragedy 🙂 Maybe because of more customized court cards (read below).

I guess D&D decided to keep a vintage aesthetic of the design but didn’t want to repeat its pattern completely. So they took some elements of the original pattern, mixed them a little and created their own slightly different patterns – wove their vintage plaid.

With the aim to underline above mentioned memory, faces of these playing cards have slightly cream pleasant for eyes backgrounds and use slightly faded colours.