My name's Ritch and I'm in the northeast USA.
My love for card games began when I was about 8 years old and my grandfather taught me how to play solitaire. This laid the groundwork for what was to come.
When I was 15/16, I fell very ill. I won't go into the gruesome details, save to say that I was sick for a good 10 months. During that time, my best friend in the world was my blue deck of Tally-Ho Circle Backs and the uncountable number of hands of solitaire we played during my sleepless, bed ridden nights. 30 years later, I'm happy, I'm healthy and I'm leading a very full life, so I certainly have made a full recovery.
After my illness subsided and as I regained my strength, I felt it was time to get a new deck of cards or two given how badly beat up my Tally-Ho's were. A new deck or two quickly became 15 or 20, and I'm sure I don't need to explain that to the good folks on these boards.
Time marches on, and my love of card decks took a backseat for complex reasons I don't want to bore all of you with. But now in the final weeks of 2015, I gave in to my longing for my card decks and bought several new ones. And of course I found all of the old ones buried in a box downstairs. Most were salvageable, but a couple were finished. That's okay, because I ordered 9 more today from Art of Play; had to take advantage of their Black Friday deal, and two of the decks I ordered are replacements.
I'm happy to be re-entering this hobby, and I'm happy to have found people who share this interest. Because I've been out of circulation for at/near 15 years, please bear with me if I ask stupid questions or post to the wrong forums.
For the record, blue Tally-Ho Circle Backs will always hold a special place in my heart, and that was one of the replacement decks I ordered from Art of Play today. I know they aren't flashy or anything special on the whole; to me they'll always be that trusted friend who comforted me in a time of need, even if the deck I had as a teenager has long since gone to the Great Dealer's Table in the Sky. A deck of cards made with solid gold and gilded with platinum could never take the place of blue Circle Back Tally-Ho's in my heart.
