Introduced in 1887. Discontinued in 1907. Wheel No. 1 is a very pleasing graphic back design, featuring a high-wheel Penny Farthing bicycle, along with appropriate oil lamps. This design is common in red and blue, but quite rare in green and brown.

Wheel No. 1 is one of several Bicycle back designs featuring the three winged wheel, the logo of the League of American Wheelmen(L.A.W.). For more information about the L.A.W., please visit the League back page.

This design had a very long run. Even after the back was discontinued, it was replaced by an almost identical Wheel No. 2. The latter design features a fully symmetrical four winged wheel in the center of the card as opposed to the three wings found on Wheel No. 1.

At some point during its run, Wheel No. 1 was redrawn to accommodate the need for new printing plates, as were many back designs. Many subtle changes can be found from one press run to the next with several long running Bicycle decks. In the case of Wheel No. 1, the shading of the stylized lanterns in the corners were changed more substantially, even as the rest of the card was essentially identical to the previous version. See a comparison of the two versions, below.

The final picture, below, is a single card from the collection of Isaac Sherwood. With this discovery, I am adding Wheel No. 1 to the list of Bicycle cards that were issued as a music deck. Others include Cupid (Sod), Emblem, Lotus, Old Fan, Safety and Thistle. In every case, I believe the cards backs were printed by Russell and Morgan and the faces were then printed with the music notations by a third party printer. The only complete music deck I have ever seen is the Lotus deck, “Shuffle Staff,” by Helen Parker Ford.