I didn't even know this thread existed - I'm glad it's re-emerged.
Top ten.
I'd have to think about that.
Somewhere very high up comes the Granny Jones Australian Tarot, a deceptively simple little deck that deals with *everything and packs a real reader's punch. It also comes complete with the ghost of its creator, who sits somewhere behind and above me when I'm using it, and is always quick with a helpful word if I get stuck or a warm touch on the shoulder. Sometimes when I need mothering, I'll pull out the Temperance card, and Granny will be right there, with a cup of tea and a hug (and for her, a cup of tea is always more than just a cup of tea!)
Somewhere high up comes the Quantum deck. I've only been acquainted with it this year, but it's a stunner. And it's really the only unbordered deck I have that I'm entirely comfortable about - I normally like borders, as they form corridors to walk down to approach the card.
I have a growing range of Visconti-Sforza decks - the Visconti and Sforza families, individually and together, had a tradition of commissioning gorgeous decks to celebrate major family events: gaining the rulership of cities, political marriages consolidating power-bases, and so forth. All of these decks exist only in part, and broken up between different public and private collections, but restored whole decks with replacement cards exist, and I have three of them which are all different and all highly wonderful in their different ways. I will get more. I adore them - the more time I spend with them the better they get. and they're teaching me how to love and work with unillustrated pips in a way I never have before because they're just so gorgeous.
<counts> That's five plus possible future Viscontis.
At number six, I'm throwing in the Rider-Waite Mini, because it was the deck a friend did a so-called reading for me as a teenager on, and later my first ever deck. Nostalgia only - it it had been any other deck, that deck would be here.
Another nostalgic deck is the Sheridan-Douglas. I bought the book in the seventies and loved it and learned from it even though I had the Rider-Waite deck. I loved the graceful-flowing black'n'white line-drawings in the book, which had a softness, accessibility and gentleness to them that really appealed next to the uncompromising harshness of the RW. It was only a few months ago that I actually bought the deck itself, and the strident colours and high lamination gave it a hardness I definitely wasn't expecting. But I've gotten used to it and love it anyway, because its book taught me to love Tarot.
Up in my top ten somewhere would have to be Scapini's Tarocchi del Vetrate - the Stained Glass deck. I love its borders: graceful "sandstone archways" into which the "stained glass" images are "mounted". I love its strong colours and flowing lines. I love its unillustrated but highly decorated pips, out of which I seem to be able to extract meaning anyway, which probably took me halfway to being able to read the spare completely unillutrated Visconti pips. And I love how it's taken me on a Scapini-deck-buying binge - I've really only discovered one deck by him that is a total bummer, and it is an oracle-deck, not a Tarot deck.
That leaves two vacant spaces for keepers that I haven't discovered yet, or that I already have but haven't yet realised are keepers. I know the creators of a few of my decks linger around, and I'd hate to offend anybody: it is strictly true to say that I really only have four or five decks out of over forty that I don't like in one way or another - this post has just weeded out the very special ones, plenty of others are still highly valued by me!
