Sold at $8500 (£6825) was a 1902 first in gilt stamped green cloth of SW Erdnase’s The Expert at the Card Table, a work profusely illustrated with over 100 drawings ‘from life’ by Marshall D Smith.
Only a year ago, when it described the book as “the most legendary tome related to gambling, cheating and card sharping ever produced”, P&P sold a copy for a record $14,400 (then £10,770).
Top deck as far as the cards were concerned was a Seminole Wars pack issued by JY Humphreys of Philadelphia c.1819. Two cards were missing but it still sold at $7000 (£5620).
The hand-coloured cards (above) feature engraved full-length portraits – Indian chiefs as the jacks, classical goddesses as the queens and American presidents as the kings.
The sale took place on March 28.
