A happy ending to Nintendo’s tragic release of Shattered Relics

In August 2022 he told us the very sad story From the serious Nintendo collector who, after thinking he had acquired some very special old playing cards, actually owned two worthless decks of cards.

before Mario Eric Fosquell thought he had hit the jackpot when, after years of searching, he found two decks of commemorative playing cards, some of the best examples of the kind of things Nintendo used to make before turning to video games.

“I can’t overstate how happy I was to find these seventy-year-old Nintendo cards, showcasing Kyoto in the 1950s,” Vosquel wrote enthusiastically on August 7. “In all my years of collecting, these are the only copies I’ve come across.” To put that into perspective, Writing on his blogFosquel adds that this is the first time he’s been there never I saw the cards—printed entirely in English—put up for sale, after spending “over twenty years searching for vintage Nintendo items”.

When you open them, however, it’s a disaster:

“However, when I carefully removed part of the wrapping, I quickly discovered that all the cards had been completely fused together,” he is writing. “They have been pressed together for so long, probably under hot and humid conditions, that the ink on all the cards has made them stick together perfectly. The individual pile of cards has reduced to one solid brick. The pictures may be printed on the cards, which contain quantities A relatively large amount of ink may have contributed to this as well.”

Note that these cards old, and thus we lacked any of the plastic or foil that we normally associate with playing cards produced in recent decades. These sheets were made entirely of paper, so when he says they were fused together, he means it. This is no longer a deck of cards, but an expensive deck of cards.

Or so we thought! Since Voskuil’s story has been featured on websites like this one, it’s ended up in both news feeds and Google search results, which means it’s starting to reach people outside of your usual video game collector circles. “Within months after the story was posted online, I was offered two sets, by two different people, both from the US.” Fosquell He writes in an update on his site. They reached out to me separately after reading about these cards on this blog.

The first set came from someone who runs a Facebook group called Play Card Exchange, who “acquired Nintendo Souvenir Kyoto playing cards some time ago through a property sale.” The second came from a lady who lives in Portland. “A copy of the Kyoto souvenir playing cards was discovered in an abandoned house in her area,” Fosquell says. “She didn’t know anything about cards, so she looked online, found my letter, and called me.”

After making deals to buy both floors, Fosquel is now in his possession and he couldn’t be happier. they are in maiden case, one of the decks including a sample card still attached to the outside, He has posted a plethora of high-quality photos on his site so we can all enjoy the art – and historical significance – of the cards..