Circleville company issues covered bridge and souvenir decks of playing cards
By CARL E. FEATHERLifestyle Editor
The six of hearts and king of spades have special meaning for Ashtabula County card players who play with a new deck from Real Souvenir Playing Cards.
Their 54-card Covered Bridge Playing Cards feature bridges of Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. Two Ashtabula County bridges, the Warner Hollow bridge in Windsor and Mechanicsville bridge in Austinburg Township, are part of the three-state deck.
"Ohio has enough covered bridges to do an entire deck by itself," says James Esteph, owner of Newt's Playing Cards in Circleville. "But West Virginia and Kentucky did not."
Esteph wanted to do a regional deck so the cards would appeal to a wider market than just one state. He worked with photographer Bill Miller of Wish I Was There Photography to come up with a representative sampling of covered bridges in the three neighboring states.
"People collect things with covered bridges on them and we thought it would bring in other regions this way," he says.
Criteria for inclusion were that the bridge be over active water and it contribute to the overall variety of the deck.
Miller photographed every bridge in the deck. Esteph says Miller works with transparency originals and does not do any retouching of his scenics. Each image is selected for both the subject matter and nuances that make Miller's rendering of the scene unique.
The deck is designed so a different bridge and description is on the face of each card. The same generic graphic is on the back of every card, so the cards are perfectly suited for play.
"It gives you something to look at while playing cards," Esteph says.
Introduced earlier this week, the cards are selling briskly. Esteph is already thinking about doing a second deck in the series.
Established in 2000 as Newton's Novelties, Newt's changed it's focus to a playing cards only business in 2002. NewtsCards.com has become the playing card portal on the Internet and offers everything from card blogs to a card search engine.
Esteph's souvenir playing card company issues collector's playing cards of regional interest. He's rolling out this month a deck of Ohio State Fair cards featuring images from fairs of long ago. The cards are officially licensed by the fair board.
He has lots of other souvenir decks in mind.
"We're a playing card store and we do a lot of gambling, from a business standpoint," he says.
Real Souvenir Playing Cards also works with historical societies to create decks that can be sold as fund-raisers. The company's first fund-raising deck, of Circleville, launched that aspect of his business.
"It took off like crazy," says Esteph.
A historical society gets businesses to sponsor a card in each deck, which can feature historical or contemporary photos on the faces. An income of $7,000 from selling one project is possible.
"It's a godsend to these historical societies," says Esteph.
His Web site, realsouvenirplayingcards.com, provides more information about the fund-raisers. For more information about the bridge cards, or to purchase them online, visit coveredbridgeplayingcards.com.
Local vendors who plan to stock the decks include Covered Bridge Pizza, Route 193, North Kingsville, and the Olin Covered Bridge Museum, 1918 Dewey Road, Ashtabula (open weekends). The decks should be available at these locations within a week.
