Pick a Card, Any Card: Collecting Las Vegas, One Used Deck at a Time
Every deck dealt in Las Vegas was meant to be destroyed. Here's why so many weren't, and why a cancelled deck with a hole through it might be the best dollar you ever spend in this town.
I'm James Hogg, editor of Vegas Retold and the creator of its walking tours. I spent more than twenty years in Las Vegas luxury hospitality, as a butler manager at the MGM Grand Skylofts and Caesars Palace. Since then I've written the Lost Stories of Las Vegas books, and I'm a member of the Museum of Gaming History. Guests love to bring in their old Las Vegas treasures to show us, and every so often someone puts a battered little card box on the table, with a hole punched through every card inside. They always ask the same thing: where did this come from, and why has somebody ruined it?
A word before we start: this isn't a definitive guide. I've been collecting for more than 23 years, and the serious card collectors out there know far more than I do. This is something gentler. I want to get you as excited as I am about an object that was used for a few hours, then deliberately destroyed, and still somehow ended up in your kitchen drawer.
Fifty-two stories in every box
Before we get to Las Vegas, look closely at any deck of cards, because two of them have stories of their own.
Start with the ace of spades. Why is it the fancy one? Blame the British taxman. Britain charged a duty on playing cards from 1711, and from about 1718 the stamp showing the tax had been paid was put on the ace of spades, probably because it sat on top of the pack. From 1765 the tax office printed the ace itself, and card makers weren't allowed to make their own. Forging one was a capital offence. In 1805 a forger named Richard Harding was hanged in London for faking the duty stamp on the ace of spades.
In 1828 the government introduced an even more elaborate official ace, which collectors still call "Old Frizzle." When the rules relaxed in 1862, makers began designing their own aces and putting their names on them. The tax is long gone, but the fancy ace of spades stayed, and it's still there in the deck on your table.
America taxed playing cards too. The federal government first did it in 1862, to help pay for the Civil War, and apart from a gap between 1883 and 1894, the tax lasted until June 22, 1965. The difference is where the stamp went: not on the ace, but on the package, so opening a new deck usually tore it. American makers kept the fancy ace of spades anyway, often putting their own name or branding on it. It's remarkable when you think about it. The humble deck of cards has helped pay for a war, sent a man to the gallows and filled government coffers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Then there's the king of hearts, known as the "suicide king," because he appears to be driving a sword into his own head. He isn't. Centuries of careless copying by printers wore away the head of the axe he once held, and what was left of the handle turned into a sword that seems to disappear behind his head. A printing mistake became one of the most famous faces in the deck.
A town that deals all night
Las Vegas has been dealing cards since Nevada legalized wide-open gambling in 1931, and it has never stopped. Every blackjack table, every poker room and every baccarat pit needs fresh decks, day and night, which means this city goes through playing cards on a scale that's hard to imagine.
Every game on the felt
Walk through any casino and count the games that need a deck. Blackjack, of course. Baccarat and mini-baccarat. Poker, from the cash tables to the tournament rooms. Then there are the newer table games, like Three Card Poker, Let It Ride, Pai Gow Poker and Ultimate Texas Hold'em.
And there's one you might not know: Casino War. It's the game you played as a child. You get one card, the dealer gets one card, and the higher card wins. If you tie, you can surrender half your bet or "go to war," doubling your stake while the dealer burns three cards and deals again. It was developed by a small company in Carson City, Nevada, the patent was filed in 1993, and by 1994 it was being dealt at five Northern Nevada casinos, starting with Harrah's Tahoe.
Some card games have vanished altogether. Pan, short for panguingue, was once dealt in Las Vegas poker rooms, with the house taking a rake. When the hold 'em craze hit, the last of the poker-room pan games disappeared.
Cards can even stand in for other games entirely. For years, Oklahoma's tribal casinos weren't allowed to let a ball or dice decide the result, so they offered "Bonus Roulette" and "Bonus Craps," played with cards instead. Real ball and dice games only became legal there in 2018.
And new games keep arriving. In Nevada, a new table game is licensed a little like a new drug. The inventor files a patent, pays a lab to certify that the maths works, pays a $3,000 application fee and finds a casino willing to run a field trial for 45 to 180 days. The Gaming Control Board approves only seven to 10 brand-new games a year, and few make it past their first casino. Three Card Poker began that way: Derek Webb invented it in Britain in 1994 and moved to the United States in 1996 to get it into casinos, a job he compared to "pulling teeth." Every one of those games, old or new, needs fresh decks, and every one of those decks ends up with a hole through it.
Cleopatra and Caesar
My favourite example is Caesars Palace. From the early 1970s to the end of the 1970s, the Caesars cards didn't use the standard court cards. The queen of hearts was Cleopatra, and the king was Caesar himself. Only Caesars could get away with putting its own royalty in the deck.
Bridge night
Bridge was hugely popular from the 1940s onwards, and the casinos knew it. So they often gave their old decks away, because they knew guests would take them home and play at their weekly bridge night. Every time someone shuffled, there was the casino's name on the back of the card, and they'd remember their trip. That's why so many of these decks still turn up in grandma's drawer today.
What they kept is a tangible link in time. Those cards were dealt on a real casino floor, on a real night, maybe in the same building where the stars were playing that week. You can't sit at that table any more, but you can hold the cards.
The casino is gone. The cards aren't.
Take the Stardust, where Lefty Rosenthal once ran the casino. It was imploded in 2007, and the building is long gone. But its decks are still out there, in drawers, on eBay and in collections, with the Stardust name on the back of every card. How cool is that?
That's the magic of casino cards. They carry the casino's name and the city's personality, and they were never meant to leave the building.
The cross history: the life and death of a casino deck
Room keys tell their story over decades. A casino deck tells its whole life story in a single day.
Born in a sealed box
Casino decks arrive from specialist makers. Today the big names include the United States Playing Card Company, makers of Bicycle and Bee and part of Belgium's Cartamundi, which dominates the Vegas market, and Gemaco in Blue Springs, Missouri, which makes cards, chips and table layouts for casinos. Each deck is printed with the casino's name or logo on the back, which is exactly what makes them collectible.
A few hours at the table
Then the deck goes to work. In my experience, casinos retire cards after very limited use. The Las Vegas Advisor says often a single shift or a single day. Some games are even harder on them. At baccarat, players love to squeeze, bend and crease their cards as they slowly reveal them. It's part of the ritual, and in the high-limit pit few casinos will stop a big player doing it. Those cards are damaged for good, so a baccarat deck can only be used once and then it's discarded. Casinos can afford to be generous: according to the Las Vegas Advisor, a pack of cards costs a casino $1 or less in most cases.
The writing on the box
Here's something most people never notice. On many used casino decks, someone has written on the outside of the box: the game, the table number and the time the deck came out of play. That's not a doodle. Those decks are kept for a while in case they're ever needed, because if there's a dispute over a hand, the cards themselves are evidence, and a deck can end up in front of a judge. The record on the box tells everyone exactly which table and which shift it came from.
It shows how seriously casinos take them. In one famous case, an Atlantic City casino that went to court over a high-stakes game was reported to have destroyed the very decks at the centre of the dispute.
Cancelled
Before a deck leaves the casino for good, it's cancelled so it can never sneak back into a game. Casinos do this by punching a hole through the cards or clipping off a corner. Both methods mean anyone can tell at a glance that a card has come from a retired deck.
Sold for a dollar
And then something wonderful happens. Instead of throwing them all away, casinos sell them. When you're going through literally thousands of decks a day, that adds up. The Las Vegas Advisor has spotted cancelled decks for sale in the gift shops at Binion's and some MGM and Caesars casinos, often for between $1 and $5. Plenty more find their way to stores like Dollar Tree.
Follow any deck and you'll see the same journey: sealed box, a few hours at the table, a note on the box, a hole punch, and a shelf in a gift shop. Each one was part of somebody's big night.
From my collection
The decks I collect and use come from the casinos I've worked in. But the ones I love most are from the Mint. I hole-punched them, threaded them with ribbon and gave them away with my book, Las Vegas Luxury Redefined.
The decks with the best stories are the hardest to collect. The cards you might have watched someone win a million dollars with, or lose $25,000, don't go to the gift shop. They have to be stored in case the gaming regulators ever need them, and then they disappear into a massive box. You'll almost never see one for sale.
What I'm really after are old casinos that match the chips in my display. My dream is a full set from one casino: a room key, an ashtray, a book of matches and a deck of cards, sitting right next to its chips.
What collectors look for
So, I haven't scared you off with talk of evidence boxes and hole punches. You've found a deck or two in the drawer and you're ready to join us casino collectors, or, as my wife would say, you've found a new way to fill the cupboard with "more stuff." Welcome. Here's what to look for.
Closed casinos
Decks from casinos that no longer exist are the heart of most collections. When the Stardust or the Riviera closed, their decks stopped being printed forever, and every surviving box became a little piece of history.
The jokers
Some collectors don't want the whole deck at all. They just want the jokers. Casino jokers often carry their own artwork, and because they're never used at the tables, they're frequently removed from used decks before sale, which makes them harder to find than you'd think.
Special designs
Decks like the 1970s Caesars cards, with Cleopatra and Caesar as the court cards, are the stars of any collection. Look out for custom backs, anniversary designs and decks made for one particular room or game.
Casinos within casinos
Some resorts have a smaller, private casino tucked inside the main one, with its own name and often its own cards. The MGM Grand has the Mansion. When the Aladdin reopened in 2000, it had the London Club, a high-limit casino upstairs. Far fewer people ever played in these rooms, so far fewer of their decks ever left the building, which makes them even more desirable to collectors.
Marks beside the aces
Look closely and some decks have small black marks alongside the aces and other key cards. They're there for the dealer. At blackjack, when the dealer's face-up card is an ace or a ten, the dealer needs to know straight away whether they have blackjack, and the marks let them check the hidden card without turning it over. If your deck has them, it was almost certainly dealt at a blackjack table.
Foreign casino decks
Don't stop at Las Vegas. Used decks from casinos in Germany or France make a lovely addition, because the court cards carry different letters. In a German deck the queen is marked D for Dame, the king K for König and the jack B for Bube. In a French deck the king is R for Roi, the queen D for Dame and the jack V for Valet. I still remember the first German set I saw, and the moment I realised the Q had been replaced with a D.
The tax stamp
Here's a quick way to date an old deck. If the box still has a US playing card tax stamp on it, the deck was made before the tax ended in June 1965. For a Las Vegas deck, that puts it squarely in the classic era of the Rat Pack and the original Strip.
The box
Don't throw the box away. A box with the game, table and time written on it tells you exactly where your deck worked its one and only shift. For me, that's half the fun.
What they're worth
Most used decks are worth very little, a few dollars at most, which is what makes them such a perfect first collectible. I have seen some decks go for $25 or more, but they're rare. Prices change, so treat any figure as a guide, not a valuation.
Honestly, though, the real value is in the fun. Unlike a rare chip, a casino deck was made to be handled. You can throw them, build card houses with them or play with them, for almost nothing.
The deck we play with when we go bowling has lasted six years. We play bowling poker: two cards for a strike, one for a spare, and then we draw three at the end for the table. After six years those cards have actually improved. They shuffle and deal better than ever. I only wish my bowling had improved too!
Myths, fakes and the dollar store
"A cancelled deck is a ruined deck"
That's the most common reaction when someone shows us a deck with a hole through it. In fact, the hole is the proof. It tells you the deck really was dealt on a casino floor. To a collector, a cancelled deck is worth more than a pristine one off the shelf.
"Casinos burn their old cards"
They don't. Most guests assume used cards go straight in the bin, but casinos have thousands of decks to dispose of every day, and plenty of them are sold to guests and retailers. So that deck you picked up at the dollar store for a buck really may have spent last Saturday night on a Las Vegas blackjack table.
Fakes are rare
When most decks sell for a few dollars, faking them simply isn't worth anyone's while. The thing to check is that a "casino used" deck really is cancelled, with a hole or a clipped corner. A sealed, uncancelled deck is a souvenir deck, not one that was dealt in the casino. Both are lovely, but they aren't the same thing.
Where to buy
Dollar Tree and casino gift shops are where most collections start. Check the shelves next time you're in Las Vegas.
eBay has the widest choice by far. Search sold listings to see what decks really sell for, and look for clear photos of the box, the backs and the cancellation.
Facebook Marketplace is good for local finds and estate clear-outs. Meet somewhere public and look at the deck before you pay.
Spinettis Gaming, not far from the Strip, is a Las Vegas store that buys and sells old casino chips and collectibles, and you can browse its used decks in person or on its online store.
The Casino Chip and Gaming Token Collectors Club is a good place to meet fellow collectors, and its annual convention is held in Las Vegas in June. Go and visit, and bring money with you. You will not be disappointed. Store your decks in their boxes, flat and dry, out of direct sunlight.
The card in your hand
Every one of those decks was printed to be destroyed. It was dealt for a shift, written up in case a judge ever needed it, punched through and sent on its way. And yet here it is, in your hand, carrying a casino's name, maybe a hotel that isn't there any more, maybe even Cleopatra herself.
For me, a used deck is the cheapest ticket to Las Vegas history there is. A dollar, a hole punch, and fifty-two little stories.
So next time you see a box of casino cards in the dollar store, pick it up.
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