![]() ![]() (Queen Anne needed to pay the bills to fight the War of Spanish Succession while also continuing England’s expansion into the Western Hemisphere, and everything and anything became subject to taxation.) At first, the government used the same system, but quickly, a problem arose. The tax came and went over the next century or so, becoming effectively permanent in 1711. The government sold pieces of paper with pre-printed revenue stamps on them and mandated that this paper be used for taxed products in the case of playing cards, in the late 1500s, card manufacturers bought the paper, used it to wrap their decks of cards, and then sold the deck to their customers (passing down some of the tax’s cost in the process). Documents and other paper items were taxed via the sale of stamped paper. ![]() The popularity of card games became an opportunity for the British crown - a revenue opportunity, that is. As innovations in printing emerged, the ability to mass-produce decks of cards increased and they quickly became a commodity throughout Great Britain. There’s a very good reason that the ace of spades is bigger and more ornate:ĭecks of playing cards have been around since the 1300s and have provided a great pastime for us all since. Usually, these things don’t happen by accident. And if you check a deck of cards in your possession, you’ll likely see the same thing (but only if you’re in a part of the world that was once part of the British Empire). ![]() But the one on the ace of spades is, to use the technical term, ginormous. The center image - called a “ pip” - is uniform across the aces of clubs, diamonds, and hearts. All four aces are face-up so you could see that the ace of spades is a little bit different than the others. Pictured above is a deck of playing cards, purportedly from Harrah’s in Las Vegas, that happen to be on my desk. ![]()
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