Australian Toy cards 1: Fish

"Fish card game", Anon, 36c+1

 The following set of cards was purchased at a thrift shop in a remote Australian town. These cards came in a pack of three. All of these cards are designed for the express purpose of a particular game. Although they were purchased in Australia, they might have been printed in America. 

 Let us speculate for some moments on why this deck was produced.  Most of the games that are played with this set of three cards can be played with normal playing cards. However, owing to the shady associations of normal playing cards, parents might be hesitant to allow them to fall into the hands of children. 

   Hence, manufacturers would be more than happy to manufacture "non playing cards" for the purposes of children. In any case, it would also be economical for manufacturers. Why bother to invent a new game when you can simply design new cards for an old one? 

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The present deck is intended for a game normally called "Go fish". This game involves players capturing cards in a central "pool" with cards in their own hand. In most versions, whoever captures the most cards wins.

  In this deck, the maker has taken a hint from the fishy name of the game. All nine subjects of the deck are fish. Each of the subjects is repeated 4 times to generate the deck of 36 cards.  

The illustrations of the deck are clearly interned to appeal to children.  Each of the cards has a border of a distinctive colour. Perhaps this acts in a similar fashion to the indexes of normal cards?

Most of the subjects of the deck are oceanic creatures. Perhaps the "pool" would be more properly called the "ocean"?

"500s", Queen's Slipper : International pattern XI

"500s", Queen's slipper. 62c+1

 The following deck is used to play the game of "500". Although once popular, it appears to have died out almost entirely except in Australia.  The present deck of cards is made by what appears to be the only maker of playing cards in Australia, Queen's slipper. It appears that cheap, imported cards of appallingly low quality are far more commonly available.

  The feature that makes this particular deck unique are the additional pip cards. In red suits, the pips run from ace to 13, and in black suits, from ace to 12.

The court cards of this deck are fairly typical of the Anglo-American pattern. However, the faces and hands of the figures are printed in a pink tone. This is a rare feature, but certainty not unheard of. The Joker in the deck depicts a bird grabbing a serpent. The design is different from the jokers used by the maker in their standard decks.  The black suits have an 2 additional ranks a 11 and a 12. 

Here you see the red suits. While each of the black suits have two extra ranks, the red suits have three extra ranks; 11, 12 and 13. 

Although these cards are quite frequently encountered, it appears that the game is almost never played with the extra cards. In any case, the 11s, 12s and 13s are only used in the 6-player version of the game. The more typical 4-player version requires only 45 cards (Omitting the 2s, 3s and a pair of 4s).