RWS Deck Post-1970 Publishing History

rwcarter said:

I also have an interesting deck that I haven't seen mentioned (or if I have, I've forgotten about it). It's a 33rd printing of the deck from US Games. It has matte finish cards and copyrights and has both an other titles and a Rider-Waite Tarot card in multiple languages. The Majors and Courts also have multi-lingual titles on the bottoms of the cards. Apparently a USG printing aimed for the European market.

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I'm bumping this thread because I also have a copy of this deck, and wonder if anyone has learned more about it in the years since the thread was started.

I purchased the deck from a metaphysical shop no later than 1988. The box shows a picture of The Magician card with Pamela Colman Smith's handwritten title on it, but the Major Arcana and Court Cards in the deck itself have small typeset titles, surrounded by translations in four other languages. Each card bears a copyright notation, but the box does not show a copyright mark next to the name of the deck ("The Rider Tarot Deck"). The box lid says: "Made in Switzerland expressly for US Games Systems, Inc., New York NY 10016" - no mention of the actual printer, though. The card finish is matte with a lovely papery feel.

I'd love to learn more about this version.

The RWS has been published in many different languages. In his Encyclopedia vol.4, Kaplan mentions a five-language edition but doesn't say anything else except that the languages are Dutch, English, French, German, and Italian. That sounds like yours. All the non-English versions I've seen have typeset titles. It's a lot easier to do that than replicate Pamela's calligraphy in many other languages.

Thanks, Abrac, that's helpful.