Tiger? Tank – In the Collection

For probably about a dollar from a second-hand store I picked up a bag of random toys that had a very strange tank inside. Now I’m quite the tank person, I have at least a dozen books and quite a few models of tanks, but even if you aren’t a tank person, the distinctive turret of a Tiger is instantly recognizable.

But this turret was strange, not just because it was molded in the (unrealistic) standard army-man green, but also because of the “chassis” is was mounted on. The turret is a crude but serviceable representation of a Panzer VI (Tiger), but everything attached below is a perfect representation of a “generic” tank. That is to say, it resembles no tank specifically (least of all a Tiger), but all tanks superficially. That isn’t necessarily to the detriment of the toy. Most kids don’t know or care that their plastic army-men are decked out in Vietnam War-era gear and smacking each other around with Patton or Centurion tanks. Some even have WWII-era gear with matching Shermans and Tigers (or even Panzer IVs), and more up-to-date ones have Abrams* tanks; I’m sure the kids don’t care.

What I find strange is that someone (probably in a Chinese factory) took the time to make a decent facsimile of the turret of a Tiger tank and didn’t follow through with the body. Why? Did they run out of time? Did they not care? Did their boss tell them to make a Tiger and they got away with just sculpting the turret because no one actually cared? Finding the set, which features a very unsettling modern German flag (I get they couldn’t wouldn’t use a swastika, but couldn’t they at least use the Imperial German flag?), probably answers the question (nobody in the whole process cared), but I still wonder what was going on in the exact moment this thing was created. I bet the idea that someone would ever look closely enough to determine that is wasn’t a Tiger was never even considered.

*Could be Challengers or Leopards, or any other modern tank that looks almost the same.

3 Centuries of Farmer’s Almanacs – In the Collection

When shopping in second-hand stores, I always check out the book section, but I never really look at the magazine/whatever paper stuff was left lying around section. Sometimes that’s just because there is no such section in the store, which is most often the case. But when there is one I usually don’t find the selection of magazines enticing. They’re usually the boring standard magazines everyone gets (Time, National Geographic, etc.), and I have a hard time finishing those when they show up in my mail box. All of that is a lead-up to the fact that I took a shot recently and looked at the magazine area in my local thrift store. And this time I actually lucked out. Sitting there were two reprints of old Farmer’s Almanacs, and for a quarter apiece they were hard to pass up. But what really sealed the deal was the interesting coincidence that they were dated exactly one century apart. Curious coincidences often influence what I buy; so I purchased them and took them home.

And maybe that would have been the end of it for me. Sure, I would have flipped through the books and enjoyed it, but I wasn’t looking much deeper than that. That’s when, while explaining what had enticed me to buy the books, it was pointed out to me that not only were they 100 years apart from each other, but they were 100 years apart from the current year. Here I had nearly missed a golden opportunity to have 3 almanacs published exactly 100 years apart. I rushed out to buy a current one, as the year was coming to a close and they might’ve soon not been available. In my haste I purchased the first “Farmer’s” almanac I found (which in that late-September period is actually kinda difficult), but when I got home I noticed a few peculiar dissimilarities. This turned out to be because I had picked up the “Farmers’ Almanac” (apostrophe after “s”) and not the “Old Farmer’s Almanac” (apostrophe before the “s”). The Farmers’ Almanac was started about 25 years after what became the “Old” Farmer’s Almanac, and it has modernized in a way I’m not a particular fan of (and unfortunately I must say that I don’t like the format all the modern almanacs I’ve seen have taken on). But now to get my match, having exhausted all the local stores, I had to purchase one on the internet (which is a strange idea for a farmer’s almanac).

When I got them all together, I could see that the Old Farmer’s Almanac is quite a bit thicker (it’s 300 pages, 6 times as large as it was 100 years ago) and after flicking through it, I’m not quite sure how they managed to fill so much space. It’s still a nice, and somewhat useful little thing, but it has formatting problems and includes so much irrelevant fluff that my brain kinda turns off looking at it. In my lifetime, almanacs have always looked like this, and perhaps that’s why I never really got interested in them. But seeing these older versions (of what is now the longest running publication in North America) made me realize why people bought them in the first place. They aren’t necessarily pretty, but they are jam-packed with words, most of which are interesting or useful. And there is a beauty to that old-timey design that wasn’t laid out for aesthetics but for expense. Seeing the three sitting next to each other, if nothing else, gives one a perspective on how advanced paper manufacturing and binding has become in the last 200 years.

More Shapes in Playing Cards

Despite me having thousands (probably) of decks of playing cards there is one property they have with very little variance, and that is their rectangularness. Almost every deck of cards ever printed is rectangular, even though you’d think that with modern printing we’d just be making them in every conceivable shape. I’ve still got my hands on a few oddly shaped decks, though, and as I go through them, I think you’ll see that despite them being fascinating, there is a reason we keep the old rectangular design most of the time. (Of course it’s because they’re easier to print, hold, shuffle, and store. You already knew that, but more shapes are fun.)

Of course circular is the most popular, and the one I have the most examples of at 6. It’s the shape that is the most different from the standard rectangle, while still potentially being playable. Most sets use a simple pattern, where the illustration is in the center surrounded by 6 pips around the edge. It’s about as good a design as one could come up with for the shape, but it isn’t particularly easy to hold, both in general and in a way that allows one to see the pips. But on the table they look super cool, and they allow for strange back designs that make them “loved” by novelty toy companies that make things in China. My favorite’s the one with the world on the back, but the oldest one (by Waddingtons) with pink elephants is pretty neat too.

The third most common shape I’ve seen is surprising, but likely the most functional behind the standard. They are made by Umbra, a furniture and home décor company that apparently had some leftover cardboard (I joke, but a surprising number of décor and furniture companies have branded cards) and they’re five inch long, inch and a half wide oblong “capsules” (they have straight sides). This large shape and the ungainly rounded plastic containers they come in make them hard to store and cumbersome to take with you, but the minimalistic design with two pips and a line down the middle allow them to be easily understandable and the tall format with rounded bottoms makes them easy to fan out even while holding large hands. They might not be my first choice but maybe they’re an okay pack for vacations.

And now it’s time for the weird; if you want to be reminded of the wonderful days of summer when you’re dealing a hand there’re flip-flop shaped cards (mine are from Two’s Company, and not the ones currently available online) that are far too big but easy to fan out in your hand since the pips are printed on a part that curves away from the rest of the card. They also strangely have 3 different back designs randomly distributed throughout the cards because they couldn’t be bothered to make decisions with a straight head. And speaking of that there’s the “crooked pack” which introduces two angles into the middle of the cards in what I assume is an attempt to make them easier to fan, but has the side effect of making them impossible to shuffle, and that isn’t helped by the poor quality of their construction. Still, they are probably the most playable deck I’ve mentioned and for that reason they are actually still available (though mine say made in Hong Kong so they might not be exactly the same).

And since Chinese manufacturers tend to not ask questions, there are a ton from there, most coming in cheap clear plastic cases that match the cards’ shape, and the card quality is low enough that they begin to fall apart after a few plays. I’ve got a guitar pick deck that has the pips printed in such a way that you can only play with the deck in one direction (which seems to be upside down) and not very comfortably at that. Then there’s a deck shaped like a football, which literally just has regular playing card faces printed small enough that they fit inside the shape and thus are almost unplayable because there’s no way to hold more that a few and see the values on the card. And I have a heart deck that looks just as bad despite trying to compensate for the new shape.

But the absolutely worst shaped deck I have ever encountered is a little one shaped like a racecar, complete with an east-to-tear triangle for the spoiler. The deck is a master-class in not thinking: the design is too complicated to hold, shuffle, or easily put back in the case. The cardstock used is flimsy and easily tear-able, while the coating makes them slippery when being held. The pips are placed where they are hard to see while fanning the cards, and they are black numbers surrounded by a black circle (yes, all four 9s have the same pips, same for the 8s, etc.), and to make things just that little bit more confusing, they even changed out the regular suits for: helmets, trophies, flags, and wheels. They’re just a disaster, but you can still buy them at party-favor websites if you don’t want anyone at your party to have fun playing cards.

(Now, before the last paragraph here, I’d like to briefly mention a deck that had me fooled. Even though I had previously seen what was inside I still thought that the “Archideck” was a set of different shaped cards because of its “building” -shaped box, but alas, they just have boring pictures of New York buildings on them, and shame on me for being fooled.)

So is there a lesson to be learned from all that? Yes, I think: if you want to play a game, maybe just stick to regular cards, but other shapes are fun to look at and to mess with. If there is a better shape than the rectangle I haven’t found it yet, and I’m starting to think there probably isn’t and we got it right the first time. But, of course I do enjoy all these experimental decks, and getting one out to use every once in a while is still a fun thing to do.

Grimaud S.I.C. 4-color Playing Cards (Symmetrical International Cards) – In the Collection

I have more playing cards than is good for me, really. I’ve seen so many decks it sometimes seems like I’ve seen them all… usually until the next week, when I find something different. Often it’s just a different back, but there’s still room for me to be surprised with the faces. We haven’t yet perfected the design of the playing card, uniform as it might seem with the dominance of the USPCC (United States Playing Card Company {And to a lesser extent Cartimundi}). Every so often you find a deck that has been designed to meet a specific challenge, such as the Symmetrical International Cards (or S.I.C.) deck, in this case printed by Grimaud, the French playing card manufacturer (now owned by Cartimundi) (I don’t know if any other manufacturer ever produced these cards).

The S.I.C. deck is a design that sets about trying to solve two problems: left handed players wanting to fan their cards the opposite way, and asymmetrical icons on odd numbered cards (that are sometimes used to covertly signal other players). To solve these problems pips are placed in all 4 corners, and on the odd numbered, non-face-cards of 3 suits (diamonds is unchanged) the center pip is replaced by two pips that are slashed in half and meet at the middle. The slashes on spades are left-handed, and the slashes on hearts are right-handed. For clubs the icon now simply has 4 “petals” (leaves) instead of 3. The deck was developed by Michele Leone, a bridge player, to help stop cheating in that game. The design was used by the Italian Bridge Federation around 2010. And that is literally all the information I could find about it.

My particular deck(s) (the one shown here has a yellow back, and I have another with a green back somewhere), printed by Grimaud, also have the clubs and diamonds in green and yellow respectively, rather than their traditional colors. I suspect this is because they wanted to clear up some confusion that may result from having the pips on all 4 corners (I like it but from what I’ve read online it’s pretty divisive). I can find no reference to this deck online. I found it in America, with many other sets of bridge cards (mine isn’t in the original box, instead it’s in an “American Contract Bridge League” box. The cards that are supposed to be inside have quite a different design), and the face-card values are the English standard (J,Q,K). So I just have no clue.

They are one of the most well-thought-out decks of cards I’ve ever seen. Of course it’s not necessary unless you’re worried about people cheating at bridge, but it’s still a lovely design with an unobtrusive back, simple face-card design, and those really neat French-style clubs.

Cadillac Craftsman Zippo Tape Measure – In the Collection

I like items that confuse me at first. Like many, I enjoy figuring out the puzzle of their story. When I first saw the words “Cadillac” and “Craftsman” engraved on an item with a laurel in a font similar to the Craftsman Tool logo I assumed it was some strange crossover of the two. And I became more intrigued when I discovered the item was a stainless steel tape measure made by the Zippo company.

Unfortunately, it isn’t a three-brand crossover, but it is a fascinating thing. Cadillac Craftsmen were a group that was sponsored by the Cadillac car company and certified to have a certain amount of knowledge and experience working on Cadillac vehicles. As a reward for being up to the company’s quality standards, those certified also received a bunch of cool swag, which seemed to change from year to year. And one, or a few, of these years they were given an engraved Zippo tape measure.

I never knew Zippo made tape measures, which they still do, in several versions: the main one looking nothing like this, and the promotional version (available only as such, it appears, like the Bic Clic) which is very similar to this one. This 6’ (180cm) (though the feet aren’t marked, only inches and cm) model has a brushed stainless steel body quite similar in dimensions to the bottom half of your standard Zippo lighter, and a plastic base bearing the company name. The tape is nothing special: it’s white, and 3/8ths inch thick. Mine’s a bit dirty and the action is kinda gummy after what I assume is years of use, but it’s still readable and retractable.

I hope that items like these have led long and useful lives. It’s a well-built tool that was presented to a workman and I’d like to believe it performed admirably for many years. I probably won’t be nearly as hard on it (as I’m not wanting for tape measures) and it’ll now likely be able to mostly retire into my Zippo collection having done its job well.