Unrecorded Circular Advertising "Advantage or Marked Back Playing Cards", 1860s
Letterpress circular
8 x 10 inches
This unrecorded circular advertises “advantage” playing cards which allow the unscrupulous gambler or dealer “to tell the color suit and size” of the cards “by the backs as well as...
This unrecorded circular advertises “advantage” playing cards which allow the unscrupulous gambler or dealer “to tell the color suit and size” of the cards “by the backs as well as the face.” These rigged cards are designed for use in games such as poker, euchre, cribbage, whist, faro, loo, “and all other games of Cards, where knowing JUST what your opponent has in his hand would cause you to win.” The advertisement also offers “brief cards, longs and shorts, and strippers” which are playing cards which have been trimmed or elongated so that they can be easily cut to or pulled from the deck. It also mentions as loaded dice, bogus faro boxes and tools, and other gaming supplies. The text also stresses that business is strictly confidential and that any purchase is "done up so as to defy detection." Interestingly, the text is virtually innuendo-free and devoid of any read-between-the-lines type vocuabulary. Rather, it quite plainly states that one can, and should, use these items to cheat, and cheat well.
There is little available information about Graves and Co., the company that offered these crooked wares, or about Howard M. Graves, the firm’s one-time proprietor. An 1862 article published in the Charleston Daily Courier writes that “among the many curiosities in the way of letters, papers, etc., picked up in the deserted Yankee below camps Richmond” were a number of circulars similar to the present example, which were sent by Graves to Union soldiers. “A most perfect way to encourage gambling,” the article opines, “which has no doubt attained to a great extent in the Northern army.”