Adam McLean said:
I just saw a copy of Michael Dummett's book 'The Game of Tarot' on auction on Ebay for 180 UK pounds ($ 325).
I am totally amazed. I had not thought this book was so rare!
Luckily I bought a copy of it years ago.
You are lucky. I inherited someone's reduced photocopy of the first 200-odd pages. Fortunately, I *did* buy the 2004 Dummett and McLeod "History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs" (HGT). But even though the descriptions of the games entirely supercede those in Game of Tarot, there are parts to Game of Tarot that are yet to be updated.
Chapters 1 and 4 are updated thoroughly in the HGT, as are all of chapters 7-17, 19, and 21-28. That is, the bulk of Game of Tarot has been revised in the HGT.
Chapters 2 and 3 of Game of Tarot, a history of playing cards, is still the standard study of the subject. It has not been updated anywhere.
Chapters 5 and 6 have of course been updated and extensively expanded by "Wicked Pack of Cards" and "History of the Occult Tarot"
Chapter 18, on Trappola, has not been updated thoroughly anywhere.
Chapter 20, containing Michael Dummett's influential thesis on the early order of the trumps, has not been updated in HGT or anywhere.
Thus chapters 2 and 3, and 18 and 20, of Game of Tarot are still the standard - or perhaps better, the fullest - studies of their subjects.
