Ok, I know some of you will think this is going too far, but here it is. This morning, I got to work to find a package containing a deck of playing cards from the Alhambra in Aruba I purchased off of ebay. I had a single of the deck type from Janice O'Neal (thank you again, Janice), but I prefer to collect whole decks. Anyway, the deck has a white back with a green logo containing a pair of cards which form a blackjack (an ace and a queen). The deck is in very nice shape (though no jokers). I started to notice two shades of green on the card backs. I checked very closely and found only two shades and no gradations in between. In fact, there are 15 lighter green cards and 37 darker green cards, which matches the container (which has the deck back depicted on it, instead of a cutout to reveal the logo). Here is a comparison of the two types:

Actually, the scanner has darkened the colors a bit, so here are the two backs brightened (to +60 for you Epson owners, which is very close to the true colors):

Dark Green -

Light Green -

Putting the cards back, I noticed a difference in the color red on the diamonds as well, but not on the hearts. The black cards also show no difference. A thorough check revealed that the color of the red on the diamonds exactly matched the color difference on the card backs, except that the dark green backs had the light red (almost dark pink) diamonds and the light green backs had the dark red diamonds. Here is a comparison (brightened to 60, which shows the true colors):

Finally, and just for fun, here is the Ace of Spades, which I didn't have before. It matched the ace on the card backs. Unfortunately, the queens do not match the card backs, and look like standard queens. I believe design on the ace of spades depicts a stylized divi tree. Cool.

I guess the casino had a re-order and must have simply mixed all cards together and made decks from the combined pile. What do you playing card experts think?

Michael Siskin