JOHN – JOKER CARD COLLECTOR

Meet John.

John is part of the vibrant world of Joker Card Collecting and he has an incredible collection to share.

Like most collectors, he has an interesting story to tell so please stick around – you won’t be dissapointed!

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I’m an American born in 1958. I’m now officially old.   

I’m from Washington DC, have lived in Paris and London, and have been in Ft Lauderdale, Florida now for a few decades.

What do you collect and what inspired you to start collecting something so unique?

I collect playing card jokers.

Like many card collectors, I started in magic.

I was a working magician in high school doing parties and such. One store-bought trick culminated with all the six cards being used  in the trick being transformed into jokers.

I loved the trick but I thought the six different jokers were visually underwhelming.  

So I started hunting around for better looking jokers. 

Soon I had a dozen jokers in an elastic band. Then I had a few dozen in a box. Then I put them in an album. 

And so on and so on and so on.  What drove me was that as I started looking at the jokers, I was astonished by how interesting the art on the jokers could be.

And there were so many different ones!

Joker collecting was also a reasonable hobby in that I could leave the album on the book shelf for a decade at a time. It didn’t take up space. I could get on with my life but save it for later on.

Do any of your items have an unusual story behind them or something that makes them unique?

At one point, I decided to create my own deck as a promotional item for a company that I had started.  

I had an art department so I enlisted their help in the design. But, it turns out that they were not card players and had no idea what I was asking them to do.

So I sketched out what I wanted, which of our characters and what elements I wanted on the cards, and they managed to get it all done and looking professional.

Designing my own jokers had been on my bucket list.   

Do you have a favourite piece in your collection?

This is such a hard question. Here’s eight that I particularly like:

I also have gotten very interested in the Congress 606 Matching Jokers published in the 1898 to 1904 period and I am trying to collect all of them.

There are fifty something  different ones and I’m well on my way to getting most of them although the last few will be very hard 

Check this link to my website for more information: amusedbyjokersami.com

How do people usually react when you tell them about the unique items you collect?

At one point, my son was back from college and he came by my home office with a bunch of his friends that I had known since they were small.

I chatted with them about college for awhile and then one of them asked what I was doing.

I explained that I was sorting my jokers and explained the hobby to them. 

After a few minutes, they all wandered off except for my son who said: “Dad, you remember how you use to be sort of shy about showing off your collection and you wouldn’t talk about it or show it to anybody? Dad, that was good!…”

BTW, he came by a few minutes later and apologized to me and then again the next morning.

The thing is that I was delighted more by his wit and didn’t mind the dig at all.

Generally, I don’t show the collection to people since it is overwhelming. Instead, if they show interest, I invite them to play “The Joker Game” (note eye roll by my wifey at this point).

I have about 60 different jokers in a box and I invite them to organize them visually which gets people to look closely at the joker artwork and to engage in finding patterns.

How has being a part of a collecting community helped you? What communities are you part of (groups, clubs, forums etc.)

There is a Facebook joker group organized by Joop Muller an Gejus van Diggele and Tom Van Berkum which is fantastic.  Friendly knowledgeable people. 

There’s also the 52 Plus Joker club with a conference led by Lee Asher. 

It’s an eclectic community of people from all over and getting to know them has been a blast. 

Some of them are tremendous scholars of the history: Others are fascinated by the modern aesthetics and visual effects that they could put on jokers with digital technology and foil printing onto the cards.

How has your collection changed or evolved over time, and have your interests shifted the more you learned about it?

For me, a fun part has been the fool’s errand of trying to create a simple taxonomy for all jokers.

You see, I don’t have a very good memory and while other collectors look at jokers and think in terms of countries, publishers, designers, and years of publication, I just don’t have a good enough memory to think that way.

So as my collection got big, I needed another way to organize them.

Think about the challenge: is there a way to organize hundreds or thousands of jokers so that at a glance, I know where to check to see if I have a joker?  

Color organization doesn’t work (they mostly have the same colors), neither does alphabetical order nor by country or publisher since that requires enormous memorizing.

So I developed a thematic visual organizational system for jokers.  It’s a work in progress. 

But I created a set of top categories and then subcategories and sub sub categories and so on. 

Ten sections: animals, art, entertainment / cartoons, real people,  jesters, musical, travel, ads,  topsy turvy, and Christmas. Most sections have subsections. Some subsections have sub-subsections. When a joker could be put in two or more places, I have rules for which rules takes precedence.

For example, a joker with Mickey Mouse could be treated as an animal joker or a cartoon joker.

The rule is that if it is a recognizable character with a name, it counts as a cartoon character, not as an animal.

The subcategory system is endlessly flexible. I use to have animals. Then I had a subsection of “cats and dogs”. Now the cats is its own section and the Big Cats is a subsection. 

Of course, it is a fools errand since no system can really work that well but I enjoy the challenge.

 

How do you care for, preserve, and display your unique items?

I mostly focus on displaying the collection online.

My website is called AmusedByJokersAmI.com.  

I do also have a few very-artsy  wall hangings that I’ve created with my jokers.  They are aesthetically extremely refined and highly sought after. 

Below are a couple of examples and HERE is a link to my wall hangings

 

Has collecting brought enjoyment to your life? How?

Collecting jokers has given meaning to my existence saving me from being overwhelmed by familial and societal expectations and pressures. 

Seriously, I enjoy collecting and meeting the people.

And my kids have intermittently spent time with the jokers with me.

My wife, not so much…

What advice would you give someone who is starting out collecting the same items as you?

Start by going to thrift shops and looking in the attic or basement of neglected drawers of any houses that you have access to.  

Collecting “in the wild” like that is much more fun than just buying off ebay.

Also, find some other people to look at jokers with. Online makes this easy.   

Also, don’t talk about it on dates or at work or to anyone you are trying to impress. Seriously!

Do You Collect Anything Else?

Yes, I created a collection of vintage educational technology.

I was the president of an educational tech company and I decorated the office with “tech” from yesteryear including mimeograph machines, film strip projectors, typewriters, and all sorts of record players.  There’s lots of information here on my website www.RetroEdTech.com.

What an incredible, rare, and remarkable and collection!

I encourage you to support John and join via  his website AmusedByJokersAmI. It’s an incredible resource and a must see for anyone interested in this incredible hobby.

As John mentioned, he is also a collector of vintage educational technology. You can check out his comprehensive website www.RetroEdTech.com for more information!

 

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