Brelsford C E C W Dimick (3 results)

1st Edition. First Edition. Octavo. Cardboard covers. Complete with 20 pages, including cover. Full-page colour illustrations of Bicycle playing cards. Includes full page advertisements. Good. Some chipping and staining to cover. Binding tight. Textblock generally clean. Aging as expected.

First edition. Oblong octavo (9 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches). 10 leaves (20 pp.) including wrappers, on thick card stock. Color lithographed throughout. Publisher's color pictorial wrappers, string tie. Minor soiling but a very good copy .A humorous and colorful look at the game of poker, with pictures of cards facing witty passages about the game. The rear cover has a chromo of a man holding a candle to light the way of three gamblers leaving a poker room with the caption - "Good morning boys". OCLC/WorldCat lists only six copies in institutional libraries. From the gambling/card collection of R. J. Goulet (with his hard to discern blind-stamp).

Oblong 8vo. [20 pp (unpaginated)], colour chromolithograph printed throughout on thick cardstock. Self-printed chromolithograph covers, cover art on front of burning cigar, deck of cards, and poker chips, on back shows humorous cover with the game's host holding a lighted candle saying good morning boys as he sees off the other players, punch sewn at gutter margin with gold silk braid (slight shelfwear, rubbing, very small water spot on lower corner front cover), still an excellent bright copy. First edition of this scarce and unusual advertising promotion for the United States Cartridge Co., featuring the humorous limericks and visual puns. Brelsford (b. 1853) was a noted Harrisburg, PA shooter, gambler, and contributor to Forest and Stream, and other sporting magazines in the 19th century, and Charles Dimick (b. 1858), commercial agent for U.S. Cartridge Co. and U.S. Bunting Co., was also a competitive trap shooter. In fact, Dimick wrote Trap Shooting Rules of the American Shooting Association in 1898, published in a small number by the Stillings Press. There is a notice on the recto of the last leaf indicating that additional copies could be purchased for 25˘ each. The visual puns are completed in each case by a certain poker hand such as a Pair, three Jacks, or Royal Straight Flush to close the game, all with Bicycle Playing Cards. This work has often been attributed to Russell & Morgan who was the playing card printer that had changed their name to the United States Playing Card Co. by 1895, and simply appears to be a faithful reproduction of the suit of cards, in this case the Ace of Spades. Only the Yale copy and the Schaffer Library copy at Union College in New York appear to have 20 pages matching this, the other 5 copies in Worldcat list only 18 pages.