Over the years, Marcia Ceppos and her mother spent many happy hours perusing her mom’s collection of decorative playing cards.

Her mother kept the pretty cards, mostly from the 1920s through the ‘50s, in albums with plastic sleeves to protect them. She had organized the albums by subject matter. "As a young girl, she used to display one card in the albums and either trade the duplicates or store them in shoe boxes," says Marcia, owner of Tinsel Trading Company in New York.

Recently, Marcia inherited the playing cards—"thousands and thousands of them, not just the albums, but shoe boxes full of duplicates." She now sells some of them to decorators and scrapbooking enthusiasts, who are enchanted by the nostalgic designs.

Find your own handheld works of art:

• It would have been rare 40 years ago for a home to not have at least one deck of blue or red Bicycle or Aviator cards. They're still made by the U.S. Playing Card Company, www.usplayingcard.com
• Other websites for card fans are the International Playing Card Society, www.i-p-c-s.org; The World of Playing Cards, www.wopc.co.uk; Playing Cards U.S., www.playing-cards.us; and www.eBay.com
• Another website where cards are bought and sold is Two for His Heels at www.rubylane.com/shops/twoforhisheels.

  Stumble It!
archive »