Ace of Spade – The Most Decorated Card in Poker Deck

pokerlion_blogs_img_Ace of Spade – The Most Decorated Card in Poker Deck

The Ace of Spade is the most beautiful card in the deck. When you get an ace of spade in online poker table, you are almost sure to win a hand. It is the most popular poker online playing card. With its wonderful decoration, no other card is fancier or more distinguishable than the Ace of Spade. 

But have you ever pondered why always that specific card gets all the decoration and not any other card? Well, there is quite good reason for it and to find answer to that query, we have to step back and go to early – 16th century England. 

The early deck of cards

The poker online deck we use today is known as the Anglo American pack and it developed from the English pack. In the early 18th century, due to their popularity, deck of cards was seen as a source of revenue by the Crown and thus, a tax was paid on each deck. The first to put into practice this tax was Queen Anne in 1588. With revising again in 1628 and 1711 up until the 1960. This was when the tax was ultimately eradicating as it didn’t worth the trouble gathering it. 

Until 1828, to demonstrate that the tax for a specific deck of cards has been paying, a hand stamp was utilizing on one card after the wrapper had removed. As the Ace of Spades was the first playing card you see when you open the deck official using to mark the Ace of Spades with their stamps. 

Ace of Spades’ official printing

In 1828, the stamp practice was replacing with officially printed Ace of Spades. These cards were printing on behalf of the Commissioners of Stamps by the Perkins Bacon company. When this card was placing inside the deck, meaning that the manufacturing company had paid the less shillings (from 30 pence reducing to 12 pence). Those Aces were knowing as the ‘Old Frizzle’ and actually were looking pretty similar to bank notes. 

This practice was used all the way up to the year of 1862. When Duty on Ace was closed down (the tax was printed on tax wrappers). And playing card manufacturers were free to design and add those designs on the Ace of Spades. As it was by now a tradition to have decorated Ace of Spades because of its popularity. And the love poker players had for it. The manufacturers produced their own designs for branding use. 

During the 1960, the tax was officially put to an end. However the ritual of decorating the Aces of Spades remained. And this is why, even in the recent day, the Ace of Spades is the prettiest card in the deck. 

Happy playing!