20th Century Tarot
General
78 cards with a 24 page soft cover companion booklet, packaged together in a large-format, two part lidded cardboard box. No title card.
Cards measure 12 cm tall x 7 cm wide.
The card stock is thin and flexible, with a fairly smooth, mostly matte finish.
The backs have a non-reversible design featuring a candelabra.
The cards are black and white (and grey), and the art is minimalistic. The minor arcana are just pips.
Strength is 8 and Justice is 11. The Fool is numbered 0.
Suits are Pentacles, Wands, Swords, and Cups. Courts are Page, Knight, Queen, and King.
Published by:
SKOR-MOR CORP.
1107 E. Kimberly Ave.
Anaheim, CA 92801
Burne, Kevin G. (writer)
No artist was credited; Burne may also be the artist, but I'm not certain.
The back of the box has a copyright statement that mentions someone named Burns (could it be a misspelling of Burne?).
Listed in the Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. I, p. 283
Skor-Mor Corporation, California, United States
1970 (c)
24 page companion book, soft cover
78 cards
English
Plain pips
Alcohol Tarot
Alcohol, Drinking, Photography
78 cards plus two informational cards, packaged in a standard cardboard tuck box. Not accompanied by an LWB, though a URL is given for downloading a PDF version of the instructons (<a href="http://www.beertarot.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.beertarot.com/</a>).<br /><br />Cards are 12 cm tall x 7 cm wide. The card stock is flexible and smooth, with a semi-matte finish.<br /><br />The theme is alcohol and drinking, and the art style is photography. Only the major arcana feature people; the minors are more or less plain pips, with photos of a certain number of beer bottles or glasses, etc. I'd classify this as a illustrated deck, but definitely not scenic.<br /><br />Backs are non-reversible.<br /><br />Suits are Beers (Wands), Lager (Cups), Spirits (Swords), and Wines (Coins). <br /><br />Courts are Page, Knight, Queen, and King.<br /><br />Strength is 8 and Justice is 11. The Fool (named The Drunken Fool) is numbered 0.<br /><br />The name of the photographer or deck creator does not appear anywhere on the deck box, cards, or informational cards. In the PDF of the LWB, it is attributed to The Drunken Prophet.<br /><br />Though published in this century, there is no ISBN on the box or informational cards. However, there is an ISBN in the PDF LWB.<br /><br />Published in Great Britain.<br /><br /><strong>Note</strong>: I deliberately chose not to display the Death card first in this case, as the image is so gross that I personally hate to see it.
The Drunken Prophet
<a href="http://www.beertarot.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.beertarot.com/</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.beertarot.com/TarotGuide.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.beertarot.com/TarotGuide.pdf</a>
Beer Tarot / Carta Mundi
2004
78 cards
English
Plain pips
0-9549153-0-5
Cat's House Tarot
Cats
78 cards, with a softcover guidebook (in Japanese), in an upright, lidded tin box.<br /><br />The cards are longer than average, measuring 7 cm wide x 13 cm long. The card stock is flexible, with a semi-matte finish that is smooth on the back and very slightly textured on the front.<br /><br />The card backs feature a reversible black and white design.<br /><br />Strength is VIII and Justice is XI. The Fool is numbered 0.<br /><br />Suits are Cups, Swords, Wands, and Coins. The court cards are Page, Knight, Queen, and King.<br /><br />The minor arcana are plain pips.<br /><br />There is no date, or at least none that I can identify, on the cards or box. Adam McLean has mentioned this deck online a couple of times, both times listing a different year (2000 as well as 2001). <br /><br />Likewise, I'm not sure of the publisher's name. The name "SSS Factory" appears in English on the last page of the booklet.<br /><br />I don't know the original retail price of this deck, nor do I recall what I paid. But for the sake of reference, I wrote a note that a copy was for sale in July 2015 on eBay (offered by the seller known as baby_dream) for $78 USD. This was at some point after I'd bought my copy.Â
Hiroko, Miyamoto
SSS Factory (?)
[2000] or [2001]
78 cards
Japanese
Plain pips
Celtic Tarot
Celtic history and design
78 cards + a 158 page softcover companion book in a 2-part, slipcase-style cardboard shelf box.<br /><br />The cards measure 8 cm wide x 12 cm long. The card stock is smooth and flexible, with a lightly glossy finish. <br /><br />The card back design is fully reversible.<br /><br />Strength is VIII and Justice is XI. The Fool is numbered 0. <br /><br />Suits are Wands, Cups, Swords, and Coins. The court cards are Page, Knight, Queen, and King.<br /><br />The minor arcana are illustrated pips. Because the art style is so visually busy, I find the pips especially challenging. My eyes don't quite know where to land.<br /><br />When I was measuring and scanning these cards, I noticed an interesting detail; unlike most decks, the card art includes the artist's signature and date at the bottom right corner, in tiny script, just below the card borders. Some of the cards give a year of 1988 and others give a year of 1989.<br /><br />The companion book, written by Helena Patterson, is quite thorough and insightful.
Davis, Courtney
Thorsons
© 1990
<em>The Celtic Tarot</em> by Helena Patterson (companion book included with the set). The ISBN in the book is different from that of the overall set. Specifically, the book's ISBN is 0850309190.
78 cards
English
Illustrated pips
ISBN 0850309204
China Tarot
Art
China
<span>78 cards + a title card and advertising card + an LWB in a standard cardboard tuck box.<br /></span><br /><span>The cards measure 12 cm tall x 6.6 cm wide. The card stock is very flexible, with a smooth, matte finish. This deck could easily be riffle-shuffled without damage.<br /><br />The card backs are fully reversible.<br /><br />Strength is VIII and Justice is XI. The Fool is numbered 0.<br /><br />Suits are Pentacles, Chalices, Swords, and Wands. The court cards are Knave, Knight, Queen, and King.<br /><br />The minor arcana are decorative pips with arrangements of suit symbols.<br /><br /><strong>Note</strong>: This deck is a reprint of the Der-Jen tarot from Taiwan. The art is the same in both versions, but the Lo Scarabeo version adds multilingual borders/titles.<br /><br /></span>
Der Jen
Lo Scarabeo
© 2006
78 cards
Multiple languages
Plain pips
ISBN 073871058-X
Color Your Tarot
Adult coloring
78 cards + a 64 page softcover companion book + a set of 10 colored pencils in a large format, 2-part lidded cardboard shelf box.<br /><br />The cards measure 8.1 cm wide x 13 cm long.<br /><br />The cardstock is literally like cardstock that you might use in an office; lightweight, relatively thin, and bright white. The cards are uncoated, so that the art can be colored in.<br /><br />The card back design is reversible.<br /><br />Justice is VIII and Strength is XI. The Fool is numbered 0.<br /><br />Suits are Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles. The court cards are Page, Knight, Queen, and King.<br /><br />The minor arcana cards are just pips. <br /><br />On a personal note, as someone who does a lot of coloring -- like, a LOT of coloring -- the line art of these cards is less than ideal, and the colored pencils included with the set are of poor quality. <br /><br />Yes, it's a "gift shop" type of set, so there's no point in having high expectations. But this seems like a set designed solely to cash-in on the adult coloring craze that was growing at the time. In that respect, they clearly succeeded--I wouldn't have purchased this otherwise.<br /><br />I'm having trouble finding a year of publication for this specific set; there's no date or copyright year on the set box. The publication information in the book lists a copyright of 2008, but that was for the original publication, and not specifically for the "Color Your Own" set.<br /><br />According to listings on Amazon.com and AbeBooks.com, this set was published in 2015.
Dean, Liz (author)
Launay, Melissa (artist)
Sterling Innovation, New York
[2015]
78 cards
English
Plain pips
ISBN 9781435162297
Cruel Thing Tarot
Gothic art
78 cards + a title card and an artist's card in a standard cardboard tuckbox.<br /><br />I suspect that this deck came with an LWB, as there is a little bit of spare room in the box. I may have it stored elsewhere, or I may have aquired this deck used (<em>sans</em> LWB); honestly, I don't recall.<br /><br />The cards are a bit smaller than average, measuring 6 cm wide x 11 cm long. The card stock is flexible, with a smooth finish that is somewhere in between matte and glossy. The deck is very easy to handle and shuffle.<br /><br />The card backs are fully reversible.<br /><br />The cards are titled in 4 languages: German, English, Spanish, and another language that I'm not sure of. It isn't French -- it could be Italian or Portuguese, perhaps?<br /><br />Justice is VIII and Strength is XI. The Fool is numbered 0.<br /><br />The suits are Coins, Cups, Wands, and Swords. The court cards are Jack, Knight, Queen, and King.<br /><br />The minor arcana are a curious mash-up -- at first glance, they seem to be decorative pips with various arrangements of suit symbols. But if you look closer, many of them are clearly influenced by the RWS, with the arrangement of symbols mirroring those of the corresponding RWS cards.<br /><br />The major arcana, conversely, are more referential of the TdM tradition.<br /><br />No ISBN is present on the box or cards, though there is a barcode on the box bottom, as follows: 8 420707 387600.<br /><br />No date is given on the box or cards, either, but Aeclectic Tarot lists the year of publication as 2009.
Vecchio, Luciano
Fournier
[2009]
78 cards
Multiple languages
Other
Crystal Tarot
Art--Gustav Klimt
<span>78 cards + a title card and advertising card + a small fold-out guide in a standard cardboard tuck box.</span><br /><br /><span>The cards measure 12 cm tall x 6.6 cm wide. The card stock is very flexible, with a smooth, matte finish. This deck could easily be riffle-shuffled without damage.<br /><br />The card backs feature a reversible blue and white design with peacocks.<br /><br />The fold-out guide ascribes non-traditional titles to each of the major aracana; however, the cards themselves bear the traditional titles.<br /><br />Balance (<em>Justice</em>) is VIII and Energy (<em>Strength</em>) is XI. Madness (<em>The Fool</em>) is numbered 0.<br /><br />Suits are Pentacles, Chalices, Swords, and Wands. The court cards are Knave, Knight, Queen, and King.<br /><br />The minor arcana are decorative pips; they are very beautiful, but not at all scenic. There's no specific, discernable theme to this deck, but the fold-out guide mentions that it is influenced by the art of Gustav Klimt.<br /><br />Because of the non-scenic minors, I think it would be possible to use TdM meanings/methods to read with this deck.<br /><br />The cards are titled in 5 languages, but the the fold-out guide is only in English. This seems to be the case with other Lo Scarabeo decks from this same period; I'm not sure if they produced multiple versions of deck guides in other languages for different markets or not.<br /></span>
Trevisan, Elisabetta
Lo Scarabeo
<span class="st">© 2000<br /></span>
78 cards
Multilingual
Other / Pips
ISBN 9780738700588
Egyptian Tarot
Egyptian mythology
78 cards with 2 blank cards and a standard LWB. No title card. Packaged in a standard cardboard tuck box. <br /><br />Cards measure 11.2 cm tall x 6.1 cm wide.<br /><br />The card stock is very flexible, yet sturdy, with a smooth, mostly matte finish that makes the cards pleasant to handle. <br /><br />The color of the card stock is a very soft tan or gold, reminiscent of parchment, with the art printed in a sort of sepia brown.<br /><br />The card backs are fully reversible.<br /><br />The majors have unique titles in keeping with the deck's theme. Justice has been titled "The Balance and the Sword" and is numbered VIII. Strength has been named "The Tamed Lion" and is numbered XI. <br /><br />The Fool, rather than being numbered 0, is numbered XXII.<br /><br />Suits are Scepters, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. Courts are Slave, Warrior, Queen, and King. <br /><br />The minors are mostly just pips, with arrangements of suit symbols; some of the minors are more illustrated than others, but none are what I would call scenic. <br /><br />In the LWB, Stuart L. Kaplan provides quite a bit of background information on this deck. The original illustrations first appeared in a book titled <em>Practical Astrology</em> by Comte C. Saint-Germain, published in Chicago in 1901. Multiple Egyptian-styled decks followed during the 20th century that were influenced by these illustrations, though they were not exact copies.<br /><br />This deck is very nearly an exact reprint of the original card art from Comte C. Saint-Germain's 1901 book, modified in order to add the card titles at the bottom. <br /><br />As stated on the box, this deck was made in Switzerland by AGMuller and distributed exclusively in the United States by U.S. Games, Inc.<br /><br />Though 1980 appears on the box and in the LWB, the cards themselves have a copyright of "1978 AGMuller" printed in very tiny text along the lower right border.
Saint-Germain, Comte C.
AG Muller
AGM
1980
78 cards
English
Other
ISBN 0-913866-94-6
Golden Tarot
78 cards + a 64 page guide booklet in a small, sturdy 2-part cardboard set box.<br /><br />The cards measure 8.1 cm wide x 13.1 cm long. The cardstock is thin and flexible, with a glossy finish that is smooth on the card backs and very slightly textured on the card fronts.<br /><br />The card back design is fully reversible.<br /><br />Justice is VIII and Strength is XI. The Fool is numbered 0.<br /><br />Suits are Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles. The court cards are Page, Knight, Queen, and King.<br /><br />The minor arcana cards are just pips. <br /><br />As gift shop tarots go, this is pretty close to the bottom. The book is perfunctory, and the minor arcana cards are disappointingly plain and uninspired. The majors are pretty, but not strong enough for me to recommend this set.
Dean, Liz (author)
Launay, Melissa (artist)
Cico Books
© 2008
78 cards
English
Plain pips
ISBN 9781906094867
Lars-Kristian Holmsen Tarot
78 cards with a small format, 114 page, full color, hardcover companion book. The book and cards were packaged in a hard shell, squarish cardboard set box (that I unwisely chose not to keep).
Cards are 11.8 cm tall x 6.7 cm wide.
This deck set was first published in Norway in 2003 (by Notabene Forlag A/S), then later republished in 2004 (by Chartwell Books). My copy is from Chartwell Books.
The card stock has a shiny coating that is not at all sticky. The cards are reasonably flexible and can be shuffled by usual means.
Card backs are fully reversible.
Suits are Pentacles, Swords, Wands, and Cups.
Courts are Page, Knight, Queen, and King.
Justice is 8 and Strength is 11. The Fool card is numbered as zero.
The major arcana are not fully scenic, but are at least iconic and evocative. The minors are merely decorative pips.
There's not much to say about this deck, to be truthful. It's pretty. But it's also quite plain and the pips are not evocative. It would be an okay reading deck for someone who has meanings memorized, but for an intuitive reader such as myself, this deck is simply a decorative stack of cards.
Holmsen, Lars-Kristian
Gasiunaite, Vaida
For further information:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/lars-holmsen/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/lars-holmsen/</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Lars-Kristian_Holmsen_Tarot" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Lars-Kristian_Holmsen_Tarot</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tarot-Lars-Kristian-Holmsen/dp/0785819053" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">http://www.amazon.com/Tarot-Lars-Kristian-Holmsen/dp/0785819053</a>
Chartwell Books
2004
<em>Tarot </em>by Lars-Kristian Holmsen
78 cards
English
Plain pips
978-0785819059 (book has an ISBN of 0-7858-1905-3)
Lost Code of Tarot
Occult codes
80 cards + a 158 page softcover guidebook in a sturdy, hinged cardboard set box with a magnetic closure.<br /><br />The deck includes the usual 78 cards, plus two additional cards, one placed at the start of the deck and one at the end, which are not named, numbered, or explained.<br /><br />The cards measure 12 cm tall x 6.6 cm wide. <br /><br />The cards have a lightly glossy finish. The cardstock is sub-standard, and could be damaged if riffle-shuffled. It's just a bit too stiff, and without adequate flexiblility.<br /><br />The card backs are completely reversible. <br /><br />None of the cards are given titles or numbers in a tradtional sense, though it is possible to discern which card is which. <br /><br />Markings on the major arcana do a fair job of mimicking roman numerals. Justice is 8 and Strength is 11. The Fool is 0. <br /><br />The suits aren't named, but they are represented by symbols of Cups, Dragons (curled into circles), Clubs, and Swords. Likewise, the court cards aren't titled, but seem to be the usual Page, Knight, Queen, and King.<br /><br />The minor arcana are decorative pips.<br /><br />The companion book, <em>The Book of Shadows: The Lost Code of the Tarot</em>, is a cross between a decoding aid and a book of shadows -- it doesn't offer a traditional guide to identifying and reading the cards.<br /><br />The set box adds to the overall mysterious air, in that it is all black (albeit with some decoration), and has no identifying information on it.<br /><br />This set was initially marketed and funded through a Kickstarter campaign that launched in 2015; I was a backer at the $45 level (for one copy of the deck and book set). The deck and book are also related to a film project by Andrea Aste.<br /><br /><strong>Note</strong>: The copyright date listed on the rear title page in the companion book is 2015; however, information online about the set frequently gives a date of 2016. This may be a simple difference between the copyright year and the year of distribution.
Aste, Andrea
<a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1769110239/the-book-of-shadows-the-lost-code-of-the-tarot/description" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Book of Shadows: Lost Code of Tarot -- Kickstarter campaign</a>
Lo Scarabeo
© 2015 / 2016
80 cards
English
Other
ISBN 978-0738749815