Waddingtons Number 1 Playing Card Game, play with the classic Red and Blue Twin Pack, great travel companion, gift and toy for Boys, Girls and adults.

Product Information

In 1934 the rights for 'Monopoly' were won, which has produced about half a million pounds’ sales each year since then and set the firm on the road to greatness in the toy trade in the UK. Waddingtons was a British manufacturer of card and board games. The company was founded by John Waddington of Leeds, England and the manager, actor and playwright Wilson Barrett, under the name Waddingtons Limited. The name was changed in 1905 to John Waddington Limited, then Waddington's House of Games, then Waddington Games, and finally just Waddingtons. Obituary: Master of Monopoly who twice trounced Maxwell', Financial Times, 28 February/1 March 2015, p. 11

Top: Q1/2/5 with GD10; bottom: Q2 with GD11, the first smaller-framed courts, Q3 with GD12, De La Rue's second version of the smaller-framed courts, Q5, still in use. Above: Orient Line to Australia twin patience set with special ace of spades, issued to passengers on the Orient Line mail steamers travelling from England to Australia, c.1925.Current restrictions" was used on the boxes as soon as the War was over in reference to the continuing supply problems. These boxes were used from 1946-c.1950. Image courtesy Matt Probert. Note that these are wide cards; John Berry claims that wide cards were introduced in 1925, but these cards clearly show that that is wrong.

To start with, here are a few guides to De La Rue, Goodall and a few, later Waddington cards with Goodall courts. Note that the Old Frizzle printed for De La Rue always had By His Majesty's letters patent printed at the foot. This is a reference to William IV's granting the patent in 1831, but it does NOT mean that the cards are necessarily from his reign. The patent was proclaimed on the De La Rue AS throughout the Old Frizzle period until 1862. Reynolds' own AS, designed after 1862, was modelled closely on Old Frizzle, so do watch out for the differences. One obvious one is MANUFACTURED BY above the design rather than DUTY ONE SHILLING as on Old Frizzle. The one illustrated is for REYNOLDS & SONS (1862-1882); REYNOLDS & Co. instead means it dates at the earliest to 1882, when the firm changed its name, shortly before being taken over by Goodall. During this time all the men under 35 years of age were called up for active service and a number of the girls were also either directed to the Women’s Auxiliary Services or munition factories. The girls, however, working on the bank-note side and in the department started by ICI Metals Ltd were allowed to stay, which meant there was a nucleus of trained people available for when the war-time activities ceased.

The characters of the court cards are chosen from Shakespeare's plays and are arranged into the four suits as follows: For a short period in the late 1960s and early 1970s Waddington made cards for gambling casinos. They were oversize, had redrawn Paris pattern courts and are found with and without English indices. The courts are coloured with either blue or green. The finish was not always up to standard and were probably not good to play with. The one below is anonymous, though usually the name was on the AS and the shield of the JC. [Not in Berry.] Waddington’s began their ' Beautiful Britain' series depicting scenes of seaside, rural and historic resorts in 1924. Above: an anonymous Ace of Spades with an elaborate design used by John Waddington Ltd, c.1925. The cards have gold edges and depict a hunting scene on the reverse. See more early cards → Samples: for Mudie with old courts (G6), c.1928, note the change to Ltd on the AS; with redrawn courts (GD9), with the late Q-index, c.1937

David Thornton, Leeds: A Historical Dictionary of People, Places and Events (Huddersfield: Northern Heritage Publications, 2013), s.v. WADDINGTONS. Since putting these details together, I have discovered that there are, in fact, five different types of index in the wide-size cards produced by De La Rue with GD9 courts between 1920 and 1940, rather than the three given above. On the other hand, the standard-sized cards had only three. Here are the five wide types: Round and oval playing cards were known in Europe as early as the fifteenth century, and examples by the Master ‘PW’, Virgil Solis and others survive. These early round cards were finely engraved miniature works of art, with non-standard suit symbols such as flowers or small animals. In India round cards are the normal shape. They are round, painted or lacquered discs of thin wood, cotton fibre paper or ivory which may contain up to eight or ten suits. Round playing cards were also produced in the USA in 1874 by I. N. Richardson and subsequently by The Globe Card Company in 1878. Whilst they were advertised as easier to hold, no corners to break, greater visibility, etc., they never achieved much popularity. In 1932 Norman Victor Watson and John Waddington Limited submitted a patent application for a New Method and Apparatus for the Manufacture of Playing Cards ►

Above: Number 1 playing cards manufactured during war-time rationing with the reference “war-time restrictions” on the box. Image courtesy Ken Lodge. Brian McMahon (29 November 2007). "How board game helped free POWs". Mental Floss magazine . Retrieved 7 December 2007. In 1939, just before the outbreak of war, the firm introduced a series called "Amo(u)rette" (spelt both ways in the archive material), which were narrower than the bridge cards. They had courts without frames that were the only instance of a turned version of Waddington's own court design (W3.2). Hidden inside these games were maps, compasses, real money and other objects useful for escaping. They were distributed to prisoners by fake charitable organisations. [4] Around 1985, A.S.S. of Leinfelden took over the printing of these cards for Waddingtons and issued them in one of their typical drop-lid boxes.