American Airlines Playing Cards
Written by Luc Mertens
Please allow me to introduce myself as the successor to Fred Chan as Editor of the Playing Cards Section.
I worked for a major manufacturer of playing cards worldwide for 34 years. In those 34 years I travelled about 5 million miles for the company visting all continents.
As a “professional disease” I started to ask for playing cards on the airplanes and consequently I had a nice collection before I got to know Trev Davis and Fred Chan through some collector friends. Then the ball really started rolling and now my collection counts for over 4,000 different decks….
In my career I was also a platinum member of American Airlines for a several years so I have known this airline for a long time.
American Airlines was an early legacy carrier and has put out playing cards since 1944 (Figure 1). In total so far American Airlines has issued, to our knowledge, 75 different decks of playing cards carrying the AA logo. The subsidiary company American Eagle also issued 3 different decks of which the inaugural flight to Las Vegas is a tough one to find (see Figure 2).
AA always have been very strong in displaying their name and logo on the cards as shown in Figure 3 through Figure 8 .
Recently right after the US Airways merger, AA came out with a deck of playing cards which was a generic deck in a plastic case carrying the AA logo (Figure 9). This was a disappointment to the collectors and not in line with the old style of issuing playing cards as part of their marketing campaigns ((see 242-A)) .
Another issue AA(L) recently came out with, was a joint deck with their global partner Qantas (Figure 10).
Also shown is the most recent known American Airlines deck, issued on 500 decks only, in a cooperation between the AA museum and one of the playing card collectors. (Figure 11?)
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Donna
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I have a complete deck of figure 3 ,blue with red plane on it. Is it worth anything to a collector? I figure it’s about 50 yrs old.
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Tristan
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I have an older deck of cards from American Airlines the cards have American Airlines written on the cards. Red for American and blue for Airlines. Do you have those?
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Scott Surgner
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I am having difficulty copy and pasting a scanned image of my American Airlines Playing Card. Any way through email I can send the image as an attachment?
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Jon
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Hello, have you ever run across a deck of Mackey Airlines? Are there any playing card groups that you can refer me too? thanks, Jon
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Nancy
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I have an unopened deck with a grey Ford Tri-Motor on a red background. Are you interested in buying the deck? I also have the DH-4 deck, but it looks like you already have that deck.
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Ashley Smith
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I have a deck of American Airlines playing cards from 1960. My Grandfather got them while he was in the Marines. They are still in the case. They have American Airlines written all over them in blue and red on a white case.
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Phillip Beall
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Folks, I was recently gifted a deck of AA cards that has a Ford Tri-Motor on the box. Can someone there tell me the history, even just the date of issuance, for that deck? Thanks – Phillip Beall
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