Introduced in 1899. Discontinued in 1917. Pedal is a whimsical back design that joins Chain, (Chainless), Handlebar, Lantern, Saddle, and Sprocket in celebrating one small part of the common bicycle. Note the tiny pedals that serve as a border design, and the four pedals drawn in perspective in the center. Altogether a very pleasing design.

After examining a few singles, I made the following observations. Like a few other essentially symmetrical back designs, the early version of Pedal has an extremely subtle “one-way” design element: the nut in the center of the card has an inner shading on one side only. Later versions have no shading in the center nut, indicating that this small error was eventually corrected.  The card I found with the corrected design had a linen finish and thicker numbers on the face, both consistent with a later US8c release. See a comparison of the two cards, below.

Pedal decks appear from time to time, but the deck is difficult to find in its original box in any of its iterations. The 1917 end date suggests that it was manufactured well into the US8c years, but it was not until November of 2020 that I saw the first complete US8c issue of Pedal in an eBay listing. This was the early US8c issue with the smaller pips and the serif “US” on the joker. Interestingly, this was also the one-way version of Pedal, which tells us that the shading on the central nut was continued beyond the US8d issue.

The only US8b Pedal deck I have seen is a Seconds deck, and the 32 card euchre deck noted below. When you find Pedal, it will most likely be in its US8d version.

Pedal is one of several decks that was reissued as part of USPCC’s Heritage Series. See the last image, below.