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I bought this Finnish custom deck from a Finnish online buy and sell site. The deck was printed by Tampereen paperikonttori, which translates to Tampere's paperbureau. The company was founded in 1952 as a family business. Tampere is one of Finland's largest cities, located 161 km north-west of Helsinki. The current address of the company is however in the town of Nokia, which is quite close to Tampere. Nokia is of course known best for the mobile phone company by the same name. I contacted the printer by an email and asked if they have any records of this deck, I will let you know if they reply back to me.

The deck is called Jokeri seurapeli, which translates to Joker parlor game. I named the title as playing cards however, as the Finnish seurapeli appears to have a bit of different meaning from the english parlor game. I find the design of the cards to be absolutely gorgeous. The deck is a 52 card deck with 1 Joker and 1 add card, written both Finnish and Swedish (Sweden is the second offical language of Finland). The cards are larger than normal poker size deck, the last two pics show the size comparison. All the pip cards in the deck are the same, with difference in the number and the suit indicator.



















I have to note that in the last two pics showing the difference in card size, the poker sized deck on top of the Joker Playing Cards is in square with the bottom and the right side, although the poker sized deck appears to be going over the deck. It is due to the bad angle I took the pictures in.

Cool deck, that Queen of spades holding the spades in the mirror on the left when all other cards have that pip in the right corner is great. I imagine she is so vain that she doesnt care to have her pip in the right spot its more important to look at herself in the mirror!

JuFiN wrote:Cool deck, that Queen of spades holding the spades in the mirror on the left when all other cards have that pip in the right corner is great. I imagine she is so vain that she doesnt care to have her pip in the right spot its more important to look at herself in the mirror!

Yes and the other odd thing is that the King of Diamonds only has the number 13 in the bottom-right, non in the up-left.

as y'all could probably guess, I'm really into lots of bright bold color so I typically shy away from decks that feature so few - or in this case, only 2; but damn if this isn't a sweet lookin' deck! I love it!

also, please let us all in on the secret of your wizardry used in coming across such great decks?? lol

Thanks for sharing!!

PipChick wrote:as y'all could probably guess, I'm really into lots of bright bold color so I typically shy away from decks that feature so few - or in this case, only 2; but damn if this isn't a sweet lookin' deck! I love it!

also, please let us all in on the secret of your wizardry used in coming across such great decks?? lol

Thanks for sharing!!

What could be more bold than red-black?

Finding this one was just mix of the fact that I had the patience to go through several pages of crap decks on two different Finnish buy and sell sites - and just pure luck.

I'm glad that you like it, I'll keep my eyes opened if I see any more of these.

I added this deck to the Portfolio52 today.

I contacted Tampereen paperikonttori in the summer but didn't get a reply. Guess they didn't care... Shame. I have tried to look an another deck for sale online but so far nothing, haven't been able to find any information either from anywhere else.

That is an awesome deck! Is there any info on age or provenance?

macstrat wrote:That is an awesome deck! Is there any info on age or provenance?

What I know about it: It is made in Finland as it has Finnish and Swedish on the extra card. The company Tampereen paperikonttori is mentioned twice on the tuck box, so they are the printer as the company is a paper house. And that's literally all.

Tampereen paperikonttori has a phone number and an email on their website. Just tried to call them, the phonenumber is not on use. No other phonenumber is given anywhere else, nowhere online does not have any news that the company would have closed down, several websites mention it as an operational business, even made profit in 2017, although much less so than in 2016.

I got interested in this deck, but all I've found so far is this website: https://www.paperikonttori.com/
Sadly it's the same with the Lahnajärvi deck; no one knows and nobody cares.

Finally found one. Not easy one to come by.
Tuck case is ripped, but the cards are completely fine.

Nice score. A splendid deck.

redux wrote: ↑Fri Sep 30, 2022 9:03 am Finally found one. Not easy one to come by.

Wow, that's amazing! Where the hell did you find it?

Räpylätassu wrote: ↑Sat Oct 01, 2022 6:14 am
Wow, that's amazing! Where the hell did you find it?

huuto.net of all places