Blue Box Rider Waite RWS

missy

Blue tuckbox auction

Also, a photo of the actual auction for posterity's sake! :D

I looked at the LWB. It looks authentic. I wonder if this "blue tuckbox" was a very rare version! :eek:
 

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rwcarter

It'll be interesting to see where the blue tuckbox fits into the timeline of Rider & Co versions of the deck.
 

gregory

Link passed to Frank for comment..... Also to Holly.....
 

Le Fanu

missy, thank you! I knew I wasn't dreaming, but I just shut up anyway ;)

Yes, I bid on it - as a spare so as not to carry around my original "sentimental value" edition - but then when the price went up, I thought "odd. It's only a RWS..." and stopped bidding.

That's the exact picture I saw
 

gregory

This is FASCINATING...... I wish I weren't going to be away over the weekend and have to wait to hear from Franck and / or Holly.... (I emailed Harper Collins - who bought out Rider - weeks ago - no answer, of course :()
 

Kimber

Ooooh, I just love rogue decks!! Come to think of it, I pretty much love rogues in general, but that's off topic! :D
 

gregory

OK - I just heard back from Holly and from Frank. Both are surprised and interested....

Holly says:

WOW! A tuckbox! Didn't know. Don't have one. Must get one. Hmmm, yet another thing to add to the list. My completely out-of-the-blue theory is that this would be the very last version Rider printed since the entire world turned to tuckboxes and left the ole two-piecer behind (cheaper you know). I've halfway paid attention to eBay and never noticed one before but then I just would look and see a blue box and move on since I have half a dozen of them. It seems that Rider stopped independently publishing/packaging the deck in 1972 or just slightly later as I have nothing with a date later than that. USG took over the whole mess by then and gave us yellow boxes, yellow boxes everywhere.

This is all a very nice and interesting surprise. Thanks for letting me know.

And Frank says:

Well, now we have at least one fact. That tuck-box exists. No reason to discuss that more. Have anyone given it a thought that it could be a small size deck? The seller did not describe the size. It could have been, that was the first that struck me. What to do then? Ask the seller. Amazingly it was still possible to use the old 'ask seller a question' link with the auction. I have tried that before, but ebay wouldn't send the question on, since the auction had ended and I had not been taking part. This time it, however, worked. Maybe because the auction was listed at British ebay and not in ebay, USA. I had the seller's reply a couple of hours ago. The auction was 2½ month ago and he was not entirely but almost sure that it was a normal size deck. He said that he had sold several tarot decks over the time, and if this was an unusual small size, he would have included that in the description. So we are almost sure. Then we can start looking for it and we can start guessing.

Why have we not seen this box before?

First guess: Maybe they have just been overlooked. 'Rider-Waite Tarot in blue box' will not make me take a closer look. Other may felt the same .

Second guess: maybe only very few of those boxes were actually made, being rarer than even a Pam-A deck which after all show up from time to time. Why that? It is most likely - but not a fact - that the tuck-box came after the welknown two part blue boxes, which were sold over a relatively long period. What could the reason be for introducing a cheaper box at a late time? One reason could be - but it is still not a fact - that Rider was about to phase out a remaining stock of cards, but did not have boxes for them. Then a small stock of boxes was made cheaply instead of throwing the cards out. Why were the cards themselves not taken over by USGS? Likely because that Stuart R.K. wanted to have his copyright on all cards, not only on the boxes. This period of transition was likely rather confusing and all sorts of mixture of decks with no copyright statement and decks with USGS statement and various types of boxes could easily have happened. Still, this is guesswork, not facts.

Anyway, I'll asap include the picture from the auction in www.manteia-online-dk to prove the fact that this is an existing box.

FASCINATING !
 

Le Fanu

gregory said:
FASCINATING !
Indeed. But I'm not sure I agree with Holly when she says they stoppped independently publishing the Blue Box around 1972. Maybe she's speaking for the USA? I remember distinctly in the early 80s in UK bookshops seeing the two-part blue box. Maybe even the odd tuck-box. Who knows? But that was the box which you got when you bought the RWS. I remember seeing the yellow box later. All I can say is that there were new Blue Box RWS decks in shops in the UK at least as late as 1983 and if they stopped printing them in 1972 that's a very long time for stocks to last...