“Win, Lose or Draw,” the double bridge-sized deck set featuring art by Earl MacPherson and manufactured by Brown & Bigelow in 1945, was a sensation at the time and remains one of the iconic pin-up decks of the golden age. It reportedly sold 168,000 orders in just four months. Luckily for the contemporary collector, this also means full decks with original packaging and including the 1945 calendar card are relatively plentiful on the secondary market. The set came in a box that is designed to look like a vintage book; no doubt many of these sets went undetected while shelved between real books. There is a poem on the inner box as well as a different one on the joker. The poems and images, taken together, tell a story; the brunette is pictured on one card as drawing unsuccessfully to a straight flush, and is resignedly taking down her shoulder straps. The same girl on the second deck, though topless, is more confident as she boldly draws a hidden ace of hearts from her waistband. Unlike similar Brown & Bigelow projects of the era, the cards themselves are not printed with promotional advertising, but the outer box is embossed with the custom promo copy.

The 1947 double bridge deck set “Quick on the Draw” was not the biggest success of artist Joyce Ballantyne’s career; that honor would go to her painting of a three-year-old Coppertone girl and a small dog, one of the most famous advertising images of the 20th century. This Brown & Bigelow set with card-playing cowgirls sold in great numbers, though, which means there are many of them still around. (Some sources date the decks as late as 1953, but since there are calendar cards as early as 1947, that cannot be accurate.) This set is similar to the 1945 and 1946 sets of Earl MacPherson art, in that the ad copy is on the outside box, leaving the card backs as a full image, and that the joker has custom artwork and a saucy poem. The cowboy hat sticker on the box has a soft felt feel. (As with the listings of the earlier sets, each deck is delineated separately here to account for collectors who may have one surviving full deck but not the other.)

The 1947 double bridge deck set “Quick on the Draw” was not the biggest success of artist Joyce Ballantyne’s career; that honor would go to her painting of a three-year-old Coppertone girl and a small dog, one of the most famous advertising images of the 20th century. This Brown & Bigelow set with card-playing cowgirls sold in great numbers, though, which means there are many of them still around. (Some sources date the decks as late as 1953, but since there are calendar cards as early as 1947, that cannot be accurate.) This set is similar to the 1945 and 1946 sets of Earl MacPherson art, in that the ad copy is on the outside box, leaving the card backs as a full image, and that the joker has custom artwork and a saucy poem. The cowboy hat sticker on the box has a soft felt feel. (As with the listings of the earlier sets, each deck is delineated separately here to account for collectors who may have one surviving full deck but not the other.)

After the success of the “Win, Lose or Draw” 2-deck set of 1945 featuring the pin-up art of Earl MacPherson, Brown & Bigelow published a double bridge deck set in 1946 titled “Not According to Hoyle,” again featuring MacPherson’s artwork. As in the previous set, the promotional advertising is printed on the outside box, while the card backs bear no ad copy. This time there are two different models, a blonde and a brunette, but the card playing theme continues, as each girl holds a 5-card poker hand. A new joker design with a new poem is featured, and a calendar card from 1946 is included (on the calendar card, the ad copy from the outside box is reproduced). As with the earlier “Win, Lose or Draw” set, enough copies of “Not According to Hoyle” were sold and distributed that 75 years later the secondary market for this collector piece is strong. Note: (a) As with the listing of the earlier set, each deck is delineated separately here to account for collectors who may have one surviving full deck but not the other. (b) My outside box has some damage, so I am using a different web-sourced cover image here for accuracy, and am including my scanned deck as is for the gallery. (c) This set uses the more familiar B&B spade ace design, while the set from 1945 uses the 3 colored Minnesota loon design (at least in my copies). The blonde spade ace adds the initials R.I. below, the brunette does not.