Decks You Wish You Hadn't Bought?

Cassandra022

Dame Fortune's Wheel for me. Loved the idea...TdM style w/ illustrated minors but...it turned out that unillustrated minors is NOT the reason I dislike TdM, and...just could not connect w/ that deck or want to even try reading with it...so off it went...
 

marimorimo

I just remembered, another deck I hate:

LoS RWS-clone deck, the Universal Tarot.

The drab coloring saps me of joy, and comic book style art on tarot really doesn't jive with me (it's up there with CGI art in my list of ick factors). The Knights look like some hardened, brawny superheroes plucked from their world and dropped into a tarot scenery.

Unfortunately an overwhelming number of LoS decks have comic book style art. And even more unfortunate, the only bookstore selling decks in my country stocks LoS almost exclusively! Thank goodness for review sites or I would've found myself with more unloved decks.

The funny thing is, I see myself using this as a workhorse deck as I don't care at all if I damage the cards when shuffling etc :)
 

taylorkiteling

The plain ol' Rider-Waite Tarot. The colors, to me, range from bland to downright ugly. Just a few days after I bought it, I went back to the bookstore and purchased the Universal Waite, which I LOVE. Color is everything to me! (Ask anyone who reads auras - they'll tell you how important color is!) I wound up giving my standard Rider-Waite to my brother, who is currently developing a novel that mixes an Alice in Wonderland-type premise with the archetypal images of the Tarot. (i.e. the main character will meet the Fool, the Magician, the Empress, etc. in the course of his/her journey through a magical world.) He loves it because it's so "old-school." I'm happy to have it off my hands.
 

taylorkiteling

Also the Lo Scarabeo Tarot Art Nouveau. It is completely unreadable to me - I can read the Majors okay, but the Minors leave me cold. I recently got the Lo Scarabeo flagship deck, the Lo Scarabeo Tarot, and it's by the same artist, has a similar art style, but the card images are actually very readable, and I was reading with it the first day I got it. I wish I could have known ahead of time that Lo Scarabeo had a GOOD Art Nouveau/watercolor deck, so that I wouldn't have had to waste my money on their Art Nouveau deck.
 

Morwenna

There are 3 decks I can think of in my collection that probably will never do anything but sit there.

The only one I might actually regret buying might be the Herbal. I liked the concept, but I couldn't connect with the artwork, and I never made the effort to understand the "herbal" part of the meanings. This may be why I still have it: some sort of guilt over not doing the homework, thus a feeling I ought to hang on to it to give it an honest try someday.

Reed's Witches Tarot: several things annoy me about it, enough that I don't really want to use it after all, but just when I think I ought to let it go, I'm reminded of some of its beauties, and it stays.

Myers's Art Nouveau: flat-out gorgeous! The "datedness" of the hairstyles etc. doesn't even bother me. But the storyline concept of the minors (and the particular storylines themselves) makes me never want to use it for readings! But I can't bear to part with those lush majors and courts...

I think I might let the last two go if I had the images in a book, just to ogle once in a while. Maybe I can get some quality copies made (my printer isn't good enough). We'll see.
 

Le Fanu

Oh that reminds me.. yes, Myer's Art Nouveau. I only bought it because it was a Printed in Belgium one and I didn't have it in my collection and it was cheap. Got home, opened it and promptly hid it. LOL. :D

The hair! The campiness! The cheese! the billowing blouses! The fact that it is -erm -not Art Nouveau in the slightest.
 

Morwenna

Le Fanu said:
The hair! The campiness! The cheese! the billowing blouses! The fact that it is -erm -not Art Nouveau in the slightest.

You're right, it isn't. But I'm still a sucker for the artwork. Not the minors, but the majors and courts! Glowing cabochons will be my downfall every time... :D
 

Carla

Just spent a bit of time going through this thread. Funny how we change. A year ago, I was trying to champion the Osho Zen. Now owning it and working with it is a dim memory...I suddenly realised that some of the cards (swords suit) were having a terrible affect on my self-esteem. I grew quickly to hate it and gave it away.

Regrets:

Tarot of a Moon Garden -- Because I just don't like it and never use it.

Robert Place Buddha Tarot -- Because it's too good a deck to be so ignored and neglected.
 

yirabeth

I don't regret any of the decks I've bought and/or traded for...

Well kinda. I didn't like the two mini LS decks I got and sorely regretted them, but it wasn't because of the deck but the size.(and that was due more to money than the cards -- being low income, I regretted buying two decks I wouldn't even use for meditation because they were just too small. Gave my hands a cramp trying to hold them, and made my eyes hurt lol) Then I traded them off and that makes it okay, because the person I traded them to does NOT regret them :)

Otherwise, all the decks I have are like a window into someone's psyche. It's not always pretty, mind you...but then, neither is life.

Even the one I have that seems as though the artist must not have had a psyche is still good for comic relief...LOL
 

GryffinSong

Pagan Cats. Got rid of it the moment I opened it.

Vanessa. The pics are cute but I haven't felt any desire to read with it. I'm going to keep it awhile because the artwork is interesting, so perhaps it'll grow on me. There's something about tarot that I think for me just sings better when it's an older style. Contemporary images seem to put me off a bit. I want to like it, because so many say it's awesome. But if I hadn't bought it, I wouldn't buy it now. We shall see what time does for it.