Old Fan
Introduced in 1885, and said to be the first back issued under the new Bicycle brand of the Russell and Morgan Printing Company (needs verification). Discontinued in 1894. Relatively easy to find in red or blue, even in its earliest variants. Green and brown decks are rare, but not impossible to find. Singles in all […]
Nautic
Introduced in 1919. Discontinued in 1943. Like some other decks of this era, Nautic decks are surprisingly difficult to find complete in an original box. Pictured in the first image, below, is a beautiful joker issued with the U.S. Playing Card Company’s Army and Navy deck (described and pictured on page 85 of the Hochman […]
Motorette No. 2
Introduced in 1907. Discontinued in 1917. Not a rare back design, but certainly uncommon. Also available in the United Kingdom (for more information, click on “UK” above). The original Motorette was not a “one-way” design, as many earlier Bicycle backs were, but the design of Motorette No. 2 provided a more modern and graphic update […]
Motorette No. 1
Introduced in 1901. Discontinued in 1907. Decks and singles show up from time to time, but original boxes are very scarce. Anecdotally, red decks are harder to find than blue. Note that both of the singles shown above have small holes in the center of the top and bottom ends. This is because the cards […]
Motorcycle No. 2
Introduced in 1914. Discontinued in 1917. A rare back design. Red decks and singles seem to be the hardest to find. Mrs. Robinson erroneously showed this deck as “Motorcycle No. 1.” The deck she called Motorcycle No. 2 is clearly an earlier issue, so I have switched them. Thanks to a fellow collector for pointing […]
Motorcar
Introduced in 1906. Discontinued in 1917. A beautiful back design that shows a pair of intense goggled racers in an early open-topped automobile (see a detail, below). This was long before roll bars or even helmets were standard equipment. Motorcar is not common, but nice examples can be found. Below is an early advertising piece […]
Motor No. 1
Introduced in 1901. Discontinued in 1907. A highly decorative back design that celebrates an early automobile engine, the vehicle that presumably was motivated by it, and the classic wheel with wings in three dimensions. Rare in either color, but blue singles are especially difficult to find.
Mobile No. 3
Introduced in 1913. Discontinued in 1917. Almost identical to Mobile No. 2, except that the automobile has been updated to a newer model. Very rare–in more than 40 years of collecting Bicycle playing cards, I had never seen a complete deck. One finally surfaced on eBay in December of 2025 and bidding was predictably spirited. […]
Mobile No. 1
Introduced in 1901. Discontinued in 1906. Complete decks are not often seen, but singles do show up from time to time. If Peter Max were ever to design a Bicycle deck, I would imagine it would look something like this intricate and fanciful back design. Just picture it in full color. See a couple of […]
Margin Tri-Plaid
Introduced in 1912. Discontinued in 1917. Another very rare back design–decks or even singles are almost never seen. Oddly, all I have is an empty blue box. I bought it paired with a different back design in the hope that I might someday find a blue Margin Tri-Plaid deck in need of a home. In […]