Imported Playing Cards - The Story Behind Our Signature Deck

The deck that started it all for AHPC: Imported Playing Cards - a story that begins with not one but two failed Kickstarter campaigns & a product we believed in so completely that we self-funded it anyway...

At the time of writing, Imported Playing Cards: Burgundy Edition is now live on Kickstarter - the third colourway in the series, and the most refined version yet. But to understand why this deck matters, it helps to know where it came from

A Voyage Across The Golden Age

In the golden age of playing card manufacture - the late 19th and early to mid 20th century - some of the most beautiful decks ever made were produced right here in England by master craftsmen at firms like De La Rue and Goodall, then packed and shipped to every corner of the earth. Millions of decks, hundreds of variations, each one a small piece of portable craft. Most of those decks have been lost to time. The lucky ones survive in private collections; the rest were used, worn and discarded, their makers long forgotten.

Imported Playing Cards is our tribute to that era - specifically to the trade route that carried so many of those decks from England into the new world. The tuckbox carries three cities:

Manchester - New York - Buenos Aires

This is not an invented journey. It is the exact route taken by countless packs of British playing cards during the heyday of the trade - and as we researched the project, it became clear that some of the richest surviving source material could be found on decks imported into South America, where the customs and duty stamps of the era were applied with particular care and elaboration. That research is what came to shape the design language and illustration on our first ever deck of playing cards.

Duty Stamps, Tax Wrappers & The Seal of Mercury

As was customary in many countries in the late 19th and early 20th century, playing cards entering a new territory were opened by customs officials and stamped to indicate duty-paid status. The seal most commonly used for this purpose in South American ports was the figure of Mercury - the Roman god of commerce, travel and exchange, rendered in the engraved style of the period.

In Imported Playing Cards, the Ace of Hearts carries this import seal of Mercury, hand-drawn and set into the card in the manner of the original stamps. The Ace of Spades takes the concept further: a fully illustrated hand-drawn Mercury set against sun-rays, a star and a wreath - a maker's statement in the tradition of the great Victorian aces, built from the ground up rather than borrowed from any existing design.

The tuckbox is printed on soft-touch matte paper with an aged, off-white appearance - drawn in the style of an antique tax wrapper, with a custom stamp sticker seal and an inside print inspired by the back of an antique deck. And wrapped around the outside is the detail that tends to stop people in their tracks: an authentic style tax band, closely observed from original source material, denoting imported status and fees paid. In the original era, these bands were purely functional. They became collectable pieces of art in their own right. Ours follows that tradition precisely.

The Jokers complete the picture: a hand-drawn vista of a trail through the Argentinian Andes, which when placed side by side form a diptych. It is a detail that rewards the collector who looks - and one that ties the deck back to its imagined journey across the world.

The Story

The first version of Imported Playing Cards was designed and illustrated through much of 2022. We launched it on Kickstarter in December of that year with no following, no customer base, and very little knowledge of how Kickstarter worked. The campaign did not reach its funding target.

We tried again in early 2023, this time with a small following from the first campaign and professional photography from the superb Chris Moyer aka Chambertincards, whose photographs can be seen throughout our website. The campaign performed better, but still failed to fund. Looking back, we simply did not yet know what we were doing. But we had a product we believed in, created with passion and hundreds of hours of work, and we were not prepared to let it go.

We self-funded the deck. We printed it with Legends Playing Card Company - chosen after extensive research and play-testing with various premium manufacturers - and brought it to market ourselves in 2023. What happened next was not a viral moment or a dramatic breakthrough. It was quieter and more satisfying than that. The deck found its audience. Personalities in the playing card world discovered it and spoke publicly about their appreciation for its classic style and hand-drawn character. It became, in the language of the collector community, a sleeper hit - sought after, hard to get hold of, and by the time the original green edition finally sold through, genuinely difficult to replace.

The Blue Edition followed in 2024 - a refined revisit with all-new hand-drawn artwork, updated across the tuckbox, Ace of Spades, Jokers, sticker seal and pip layout, while retaining the vintage standard courts and classic back design that defined the original. It added halftone and retro-style printing textures throughout. It too is now sold out.

Imported Playing Cards; Burgundy Edition

The third edition is realised in a rich wine red- a warm, deep colourway that suits the deck's South American trade route identity perhaps better than any that came before it. The standard edition ships on Legends' renowned Viper Finish stock: the same premium handling surface used across our Imported range, and the choice of discerning performers and collectors worldwide.

For those who want the definitive version, a strictly limited Collector's Edition is available to Kickstarter backers: glossy copper gilded edges, individually signed by the artist on the rear of the tuck, with sequentially numbered stamp sticker seals on special metallic copper paper. The tax band - wrapped around the tuck as always - will also be made of metallic copper paper. Only 100 units will ever exist - decks are available first to Kickstarter backers and any remaining will be put on our store (we don't anticipate having many left). 

Check our Imported Playing Cards: Burgundy Edition Kickstarter by clicking here.

Alongside the deck, this campaign introduces the first ever Imported collector's coin: a 2" heavy metal coin with antique copper finish, spurred edge, Imported iconography on one side and the A. Haines logo on the other. The coin reads "Naipes Importado - Impuestos Internos" - a nod to the duty-paid language of the original stamps that inspired everything.

If you manage to catch this blog in time, you can still head over to the Kickstarter campaign and get these decks at the best possible prices - if you are only just discovering Imported Playing Cards, do not fear - they will be available on our store from ETA September 2026, along with the copper coins. 

We plan on making Imported Playing Cards our flagship, evergreen line of decks, and when each colourway sells out we intend to produce a new collector's edition so that collectors and workers alike will always be able to pick up a deck of Imported, in one of its various forms, from our store.