Pack o' Cards representing the cards in a pack plus the joker. It has four floors representing the four suits, with 13 doors and fireplaces on each floor equaling the number of cards in each suit, and fifty-two stairs. Before the imposition of the window tax, the panes in all the windows added up to the total value of a pack of cards. Eventually the house passed out of the hands of the Ley family, but it is not certain when exactly the building became an inn. Records show that it was serving that function early in the 19th century, when in 1822
Cary Collection of Playing Cards the mid-15th century and may be the oldest tarot card deck still in existence. The Visconti and Este tarot cards are not the only such cards in the Cary Collection. There are also French suited animal tarots from Belgium and some Marseilles type tarots. Also included are non-tarot cartomantic decks. In 2006, the Beinecke acquired a pack of cards that were enclosed in every packet of Black Cat Virginia cigarettes, and in 2007 a deck of seventy-eight photographic tarot cards was added to the collection. Cary Collection of Playing Cards The Cary Collection of Playing Cards, held at the Beinecke