The 5th Annual 52Plus Joker Club Deck

Originally written and published by Sherman Tsao from Carat Case Creations.

The 5th Annual 52Plus Joker Club Deck (@52plusjoker) by the incredibly versatile Randy Butterfield of Midnight Playing Cards (@midnightcards), printed by the Expert Playing Card Company (@expertpcc) in a Carat X1 Single Deck Case.

This beautiful deck was created for the 52plus Joker Convention, which was held in Cleveland (Strongsville), OH from October 10-13, 2018 and pays homage to both the club as well as the city of Cleveland.

This is the first tuck design for Randy that relied solely on typography instead of mainly an image and I think that he hit it out of the park! The tuck uses gold and red foil and no inks on a dark red matte paper with a leather-like texture, giving it a luxurious and classy look and feel. The dark red and gold is a subtle nod to Cleveland as it is the colors of the Cavaliers.

The front of the tuck has ’52Plus Joker’ in a decorative serif font with ‘No. 2018 Cleveland, Ohio’ in small script below while the back has the 52Plus logo (Jester reclining on the Crescent Moon) over the Cleveland Skyline. The back of tuck has a flap that flips down and reveals the same artwork on the front and back of tuck, but the colors are reversed.

The back flap has a sleeve which houses a card listing the years and locations of all the 52Plus Conventions since 1987. This special ‘single card’ sleeve was a nod to the Chicago Playing Card Collectors (CPCC), whose members collect and trade single cards as well as decks. The CPCC merged with 52Plus Joker this year at the convention and has officially become part of 52Plus Joker.

The deck is completely custom from the backs (mirror images of the 52Plus Joker logo), to the courts (Randy’s version of Dondorf L’Hombre No 60 Courts), to the pips, AoS and two Jokers.

The only way to get one of these beauties is if you are a member of the 52Plus Joker Club. Membership is inexpensive at 25/45/60US for 1/2/3 year respectively. Find out more at their website, www.52plusjoker.org.