History of Playing Cards Timeline

Playing cards probably came to Europe from the East, particularly from Mamluk Egypt, and likely arrived first in Spain.

Some researchers identify a 1367 ban on card games in Bern as the earliest central European record. The attribution is disputed because the earliest surviving copy dates to 1398 and may have been amended.

The earliest European mention is generally associated with a Catalan-language rhyme dictionary from 1371, which lists naip among words ending in -ip.

A Florentine ban dating to 1377 is generally accepted as the first Italian reference to playing cards.

In 1377, John of Rheinfelden wrote a treatise describing playing cards and assigning them moral meanings.

From 1377 onward, increasingly numerous European records—usually bans on card games—document the spread of playing cards. Records appear in Switzerland in 1377, in many locations including Florence and Paris in 1380, and in England as early as 1413.

An account entry by Renier Hollander, receiver general of Brabant, records eight and a half sheep' worth of money given to Monsieur and Madame for the purchase of packs of cards.

European makers changed Mamluk court cards to represent European royalty and attendants. The earliest courts included a seated king, an upper marshal holding the suit symbol up, and a lower marshal holding it down.

Queens appeared sporadically in card packs as early as 1377, particularly in Germany.

Charles or Charbot Poupart, treasurer of the household of Charles VI of France, recorded payment for painting three sets of cards in his account book for 1392 or 1393.

The Flemish Hunting Deck, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the oldest complete set of ordinary playing cards made in Europe.

Professional card makers in Ulm, Nuremberg, and Augsburg created printed decks from about 1418 to 1450.

Early woodcuts were generally colored after printing by hand. From about 1450, stencils increasingly provided another way to apply color, although fifteenth-century playing cards were probably painted.

Around 1480, French manufacturers shifted from Latin suits to simplified German-derived symbols, likely to facilitate mass production. The combination produced trèfles, carreaux, cœurs, and piques.

Charles I incorporated the Mystery of Makers of Playing Cards of the City of London under a royal charter in 1628. The organization later received livery status from the Court of Aldermen in 1792.

An early pack with edge indices and Latin suits was printed by Infirerra and dated to 1693. Although introduced early, edge indices became common only from the end of the eighteenth century.

The edge-index innovation was adopted in central Europe for Trappola cards and in Italy for Tarocco Bolognese during the second half of the eighteenth century.

Edward Ludlow and Ann Wilcox patented reversible court cards in Great Britain in 1799. Working with printer Thomas Wheeler, they produced a French-suited pack first sold in 1801.

Thomas Wheeler printed and sold a French-suited pack using the 1799 reversible-court-card patent, bringing the innovation to market in 1801.

Samuel Hart printed the Saladee's Patent in 1864, the first American-manufactured French deck with edge indices.

Samuel Hart and his cousins at Lawrence & Cohen followed the Saladee's Patent with the Squeezers in 1870. The deck was the first indexed card design to achieve wide diffusion.

The earliest reference to a joker functioning as a wild card dates to 1875, in a variation of poker.

Image source: Joker (playing card)

Cellophane wrappers had become common packaging for playing cards by 1937.

After Japan banned most forms of gambling in 1882, hanafuda remained largely untouched and became popular.

Image source: Hanafuda

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to produce and distribute karuta, including hanafuda, whose name derives from the Portuguese carta, meaning card.

Image source: Nintendo

Nintendo's founding connected the company to Japan's enduring karuta tradition, especially hanafuda, flower cards that had remained popular after the 1882 gambling restrictions.

The New York Times described May King Van Rensselaer's collection of more than 900 decks as the largest playing-card collection in the world.

Casinos may sell decks as souvenirs, and Jerry's Nugget playing cards are a notable example released in 1970.

The JPL Gallery in London commissioned The Deck of Cards in 1976, featuring designs by contemporary British artists including Maggie Hambling, Patrick Heron, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, John Hoyland, and Allen Jones.

The Unicode standard defines eight playing-card suit symbols in the Miscellaneous Symbols block, at U+2660 through U+2667.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States military produced Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards to help soldiers identify enemy leaders.

Cold case card programs appeared in more than a dozen states. Examples include the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension program introduced in 2008, along with programs in Oklahoma, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, and Rhode Island.

The British Council commissioned Taash ke Patte in 2016, a contemporary deck featuring Indian artists including Bhuri Bai, Shilpa Gupta, Krishen Khanna, Ram Rahman, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Arpita Singh, and Thukral & Tagra.

Since 2017, Vanderbilt University has been home to the 1,000-volume George Clulow and United States Playing Card Co. collection.

In 2018, the university digitized more than 100 of its playing-card decks, expanding access to its collection.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, a card design depicting Igor Girkin and presumably other Russian leaders appeared.

A similar deck depicting Hamas was produced after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.

In 2024, Mississippi Coast Crime Stoppers created cold case playing cards and distributed 2,500 decks. Such cards are also sold in some prison systems, including Indiana's.