Here are my notes on the early editions:
The first edition was printed in Hong Kong in a white slipcase with gold printing on top and shiny gold inner case. The side reads. THOTH TAROT CARDS by Aleister Crowley. Published by Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minn. 55165, U.S.A., Printed in Hong Kong. A second edition with improved colors says “Published by Llewellyn . . . Printed in U.S.A.” A third edition with black printing on top says on side: “Distributed by Samuel Weiser . . . Printed in U.S.A.”
According to two emails from Carl Weschcke:
"The story is that Grady McMurtry paid Crowley $250 for the rights to the deck, and photographed the art with his 35mm camera. Some of it was poorly lit, and you probably see that in your deck. We had a contract with McMurtry and printed the decks first in Hong Kong and then later in the United States. We did some improvement work on these films. It those days, copyright was not secure like it is today, and anything first published outside the U.S. was not protected by U.S. copyright even after being registered here. There were two complications - the first being the original publication of the Book of Thoth with all the cards illustrated. That book was printed in the UK and then reprinted by Weiser under the clause putting it in public domain. And their claim was that the deck was likewise in the public domain and either they would share printings with Llewellyn or they would do it on their own. We first published the deck in 1969 and printed it in Hong Kong in a deluxe slip box. Later we transferred the printing work to Morgan Press in New York and did some further improvement on the negatives. We have not printed the deck since 1977 when a new edition from new photography was published by U.S. Games. Later, after the assertion of copyright claims by the O.T.O., further printings were handled by Mueller (now part of Carta Mundi) in Europe. We printed over 50,000 decks. I eventually sold our negatives as collectors items to the OTO. I would say that the copyright issues really never were settled, but who wants to fight the OTO people? And ethically, I think they have the most legitimate claim anyway. Frieda Harris never got anything out of it. I think our edition was the best packaged of any, and that's to the credit of our printer, Dai Nippon, which at the time was the world's largest printer with plants in Japan and Hong Kong. Today, they are defunct."
