ByElaina Zachos
Published November 3, 2023
• 8 min read
In a world filled with endless entertainment, some of the simplest and most enduring sources of amusement can be found in a deck of playing cards.
For centuries, these unassuming game pieces have held a special place in the hearts and hands of people across the globe. From the hand-painted cards of T’ang Dynasty China to paper-and-plastic Pokémon trading cards, the history of playing cards spans cultures, epochs, and continents.
When The Walt Disney Company celebrated its 100th birthday last month, everyone got to take part in this century’s-long tradition with TikTok’s new digital playing card game. As a member of the mouse-eared family, Nat Geo saw over four million new followers scurry to our TikTok account, mostly to trade these digital cards.
This got us thinking—what’s the history of playing cards anyway?
China A.D. 600-1600s
It’s unclear when and where playing cards were invented, but they were popularized in China more than a thousand years ago. References to “domino cards” existed as early as the T’ang Dynasty, which lasted from 618-907 AD. Some historians, however, say playing cards took off during the 10th century. Either way, these cards were originally hand-painted on paper or parchment.
Fast-forward a few hundred years to the Ming Dynasty—which lasted from 1368-1644 AD—and you’ll find playing cards gaining steam. At this point, some cards had images of characters from popular novels. Others were “money cards” with suits inspired by old Chinese currency.
Egypt 1300s-1500s
From China, playing cards were likely carried to the Middle East via the Silk Road.
One deck dates back to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, which ended in 1517. These hand-painted cards were adorned with intricate calligraphic rhymes and likely belonged to a wealthy owner. They carried suits of coins, cups, swords, and polo sticks. Each suit would have had 13 cards, including three all-male court cards: the King, the Lieutenant, and the Second Lieutenant.
Italy, Spain, and France 1400s-1700s
There’s wide speculation on how playing cards eventually made it to Europe, playing card historian Peter Endebrock told Atlas Obscura in 2020. But most historians agree they suddenly showed up by the end of the 1300s, possibly introduced by Crusade-era soldiers.
Europeans loved these cards. Hand-painted and elaborately designed, playing cards were originally a luxury good popular among the wealthy. However, printing presses and stencils eventually helped to simplify the patterns on the cards and made them more accessible to a wider audience. By the 15th century, playing cards could be found throughout the continent’s inland trade routes.
In the Middle Ages, playing cards began to take on divination capabilities, which marked a significant shift in the use of the cards. For example, the Tarot deck, originally for competitive card games, later morphed into a tool for fortune-telling.
Today, the 52-card French deck is the most famous playing card deck. Its four suits (hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades) and two colors (red and black) are well-known to players around the world. The deck’s popularity is partially due to its simple design and because it was a favorite among the most prominent imperialist powers: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
U.S. athletes and celebrities 1800s-1900s
Heavily taxed playing cards circulated in the American Colonies before the Revolutionary War. After, U.S. printers began making their own copies. Americans eventually introduced Joker cards to French decks around 1860.
Trading cards, similar to TikTok’s Disney100 collectibles, originated as “trade cards” around the same time as jokers. First sold as advertising cards, they were packaged up with cigarettes to keep the packaging stiff.
Multi-color printing around the turn of the century made trade cards even more popular. Although the cards were not related to specific products, companies began including them in packaging as a sort of prize for consumers. By the time baseball became a professional sport, sports trade cards were printed and sold in candy and tobacco products.
Members of the public began collecting these cards and trading them with each other. In the 1930s, companies began printing athletes’ biographies on baseball cards and selling them in packs of bubble gum. By 1949, Topps Chewing Gum was including cards of athletes, cinema stars, and big game hunters in their products. People started viewing sports cards as valuable collectibles in the 1980s, despite their low monetary worth years earlier.
Pokémon 1990s-Present
Trading cards morphed into gameplay by the close of the 20th century. In 1993, while working on his PhD in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, Richard Garfield invented Magic: The Gathering, which is one of the most well-known trading games today.
Around the same time, a game designer and an illustrator in Japan pitched Nintendo on a game called Pocket Monsters. In 1996, Pocket Monsters—which would later be renamed Pokémon—was released as a video game and went on to sell millions of copies.
Months later, a companion trading card game was produced, which contained 102 illustrated cards. One year after the U.S. release of Pokémon in 1998, the Pokémon Trading Card Game was introduced to North America by the same company that created Magic: The Gathering. More than 30 billion Pokémon cards have been printed today.
The Walt Disney Company is majority owner of National Geographic Content, in a joint venture with the National Geographic Society.
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Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : National Geographic – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/trading-playing-cards
