The Third Roses & Lilies RWS pack

truelighth

I read that to mean that USPCC "believed" that the deck dated from around 1916. That doesn't mean that it actually did, or that they had anything beyond a rough guess of the age of the deck. I know I am reading a fair bit into a short quote, which could be read other ways, but I certainly wouldn't take that 1916 date as being at all reliable.

I agree with you there. I also am not sure that that date is so reliable. But it the USPCC registered it like that. But then, we have no idea what happened to that deck at all. Would be nice if it showed up somewhere.

The crackle back is applied to the entire sheet of paper with a roller, you can spot the repeats if you study it for a while. The Roses&Lilies back would have had to be printed in the press, and would also have had alignment issues.

Actually, the Roses&Lilies deck has a lot of alignment issues. Not just the Roses&Lilies back are not always aligned properly. But some of the cards too. Some cards have almost no border. Which is why Pietro Alligro wrote in his article that it was later cropped and adjusted when the crackled back was printed. That part is true. The crackled back has much better alignment and some of the images are indeed a bit cropped compared to the Roses&Lilies.
 

roppo

According to the advertisements in The Occult Review the price of a RWS pack was 5 shillings in 1909.
Then it went up to 6 shillings in 1910 April.
And it went down again to 5 shillings in 1915 November.

My theory concerning this is that the change from Pam-A to Pam-B&C occured in autumn 1915. It is not so a wild guess that Rider produced a small number of Pam-C R&L packs then and one of them reached USPCC in 1916.
 

truelighth

My theory concerning this is that the change from Pam-A to Pam-B&C occured in autumn 1915. It is not so a wild guess that Rider produced a small number of Pam-C R&L packs then and one of them reached USPCC in 1916.

It is very possible that they made a change then. But just to avoid confusion: the deck the USPCC had, was a Pam-A with a brownish R&L back, not a Pam-C.

Most Pam-C/B decks are probably sold after 1920, although this is speculation.