Weiser vs Llewellyn

More nerdy stuff from me.

Today I got a Llewellyn (USA). It's brand new! Never even been shuffled.
Put away for years, I was told.
It still has that never shuffled feel to it, and that slightly raspy sound.
I havn't shuffled it.
I just compared it with the old Weiser.

The Llewellyn has the upside down Ace, and the missing/indolent 8, as expected.

Apart from that the cards are very similar, though there are a couple of differences that I thought were interesting.

The Llewellyn seems a little thinner, as if they were printed on slightly lighter card. They fit in the box better.
The printing is as awful as the other, but in different ways.
On some cards the Weiser has clearer lines, but on most it is the Llewellyn that is clearer, by far.
However the colours on the Weiser are better. The Llewellyn has a slight green/yellow cast to it, and on cards like the 7 wands the purple colour is almost black. Very dark.

Another curiosity.
On the Weiser, both the inner and outer box have half circles cut out the bottom, front and back, to make it easy to open and to get the cards out.
On the Llewellyn, both the inner and outer box only have this on the front, not on the back.

And this I found really interesting.
I compared the two decks, and as we all know, the borders vary from white to blue. Well, both decks are the same. If one has a very pale border on a particular card, so does the other, on the same card.

Another thing is there are tiny marks and faults on a few cards, and they are pretty much the same for both, so that would seem to indicate the same printing plates (or whatever they were) were used for both.

Anyhow, its a nice deck, lovely condition, but I don't know if I'll keep it.
If the two decks got mixed up it would be a nightmare to put them right!
But at the same time there are enough differences in the colour tones, particularly on the backs, for it not to be ok to leave them like that.
So, I'll segregate them from each other for now.

Oh! and it has an OTO card! My weiser don't.

Hi Lillie

So you finally got hold of a Llewellyn edition i was just looking through all the observations that you listed, it does seem that the card stock in this edition has a very nice touch to them when you shruffle the cards.

I have two open notches on the front and back of the white slip box, and i was just curious to know if you had the same defect on the back of your Ordo Templi card like mine, there is a double exposure to the rosy cross i have done a scan below.

A defect with my Llewellyn USA deck is that the cardback of the 10 of Wands was double-printed, with different registration each time. Do anyone else's Llewellyn USA deck have that defect?

I don't think I have a double image on any of mine.
I didn't notice one, but I was paying more attention to the fronts.

I'll have to check it out.

The notches on the boxes are an odd business.
Not only is there a different ammount on each deck, they are a different shape (a bit). One is like half a circle, the other is a third of a slightly larger circle (if you see what I mean)

Now all I need is to get the Hong Kong one, bung them all in a bag and shake it up, and I'll go totally insane.

Lillie said:

Now all I need is to get the Hong Kong one, bung them all in a bag and shake it up, and I'll go totally insane.

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It would be hard to mix up the Llewellyn USA and the Llewellyn Hong Kong cards as the first-mentioned are glossy finish while the second-mentioned are matte finish.

Dean said:

i was just curious to know if you had the same defect on the back of your Ordo Templi card like mine, there is a double exposure to the rosy cross i have done a scan below.

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I have that same defect in my Llewellyn USA deck but it's on the backside of the 10 of Wands card rather than the OTO card. Consider yourself lucky then, as the 10 of Wands is one of the integral 78 cards rather than an extra card like the OTO card.

Rusty Neon said:

Consider yourself lucky then, as the 10 of Wands is one of the integral 78 cards rather than an extra card like the OTO card.

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Hi RN
Yes i do think that was abit of good luck as you mentioned all these Llewellyn editions have many defects and differences added too them, which makes these decks so interesting to talk about.

I have noted your 10 of wands and i have had a second look through my Llewellyn and my 10 of wands as no defects, this is one of the better card prints in this deck.



I

Nope.

No bad backs, no bad fronts.

Same with my Weiser (though that hasn't got the OTO)

The Llewllyn is really lovely condition (for one of these, poor colours, fuzzy pictures, variable borders!)
I was lucky.
Box is perfect too.

Lillie said:

Today I got a Llewellyn (USA). It's brand new! Never even been shuffled.

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Congrats...sounds great!

Another thing is there are tiny marks and faults on a few cards, and they are pretty much the same for both, so that would seem to indicate the same printing plates (or whatever they were) were used for both.

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Are these marks in the borders? I've got a Llewellyn USA that has funny looking marks too. They are in the borders. This deck would also be mint except someone apparently tried cleaning the marks off the border of The Fool and left a couple of big white splotches in the process.

No, not that I have noticed.
These are little dots and lines and stuff in the actual picture.

The biggest that I have noticed is on the 5 swords, in the lower right.
Like a sort of oval smudge thing.
It's on both the Weiser and the Llewellyn, but not on either of the USG.
none of them spoil the cards, I mentioned them because it would seem that these marks are on the plates or whatever was used to print them.
meaning that the same plates were used for both.

Like the priestesses red dot on the USG's, and the red smudge on the 2 off cups.
Which would again suggest that the same plates were used the whole time for all these decks, despite other differences like how green they are or arn't.