A bad story about an Eteilla deck.

[dminoz]

I have a story to retell...

Years (decades, actually) ago, I spent some time working on the front desk of an inner city crisis centre in Auckland, New Zealand. People would come to get emergency accomodation, food parcels, etc. (A lousy, dangerous job, but let's not go there...) People would also come in to drop off boxes of stuff for the opp shop. Clothes, old books, endless boxes of grapefruit, that sort of thing...

One day someone came in with a box of books for the opp shop. Snuggling in between some old worthless paperbacks was a box of tarot cards, in perfect condition, but obviously very old. It was this:

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/book-of-thoth-etteilla/

and the date on the box was sometime around 1850-60.

It wasn't a reproduction, it was the real thing. So the boss said I could have the deck if I put 5 bucks in the office kitty, which I did.

I took the deck home, and put it on a window ledge. A few days later it rained. Water leaked in through the window frame, where it had never leaked before, and down onto the ledge. It soaked up into the box and the cards, and ruined them all, so thoroughly that they all just fell to pieces. End of deck.

I was obviously not meant to own those cards! Sometimes I wish I'd put it somewhere else on that day that it rained...

Does anyone have any idea what it might have been worth?

 

[firecatpickles]

Talk about crying over spoiled milk -You are definitely a braver soul than I to ask!

KK

 

[Alta]

I saw those exact cards in a used bookstore last summer for $75 Canadian dollars. Didn't buy them, not that interested in Eteilla, but did look at them for a while so I remember the price.

I was on vacation and my sister was sick in the hotel room and so I was wasting a couple of hours poking around the numerous used bookstores in Sydney on Vancouver Island. I gather a lot of folks retire there, and then die eventually. The town is wall to wall used everything stores; kids come out to settle parents' estate, don't want the stuff etc, as it was explained to me by the friendly owner of one of them.

 

[catlin]

Woha, "only" 75 CAN$???

 

[Lotus_Flower]

Etteila Decks

I actually ran across some info on the Etteila decks and cartomancy, and, if it weren't for the fact that it was a historical reproduction tarot deck destroyed, I wouldn't actually be that upset...I found some of Etteila's cartomantic interpretations, and I really felt like they were too precise to allow for the individual to work with in a coherent context or use their intuition with...I don't know if I'm expressing myself well on that point...they just seem too "set in stone" for me. I don't think I would be able to interpret it very well, but that doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't other readers out there who are adepts at it.

 

[stella01904]

I actually ran across some info on the Etteila decks and cartomancy, and, if it weren't for the fact that it was a historical reproduction tarot deck destroyed, I wouldn't actually be that upset...I found some of Etteila's cartomantic interpretations, and I really felt like they were too precise to allow for the individual to work with in a coherent context or use their intuition with...I don't know if I'm expressing myself well on that point...they just seem too "set in stone" for me. I don't think I would be able to interpret it very well, but that doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't other readers out there who are adepts at it.

Etteilla was a nut job, pure and simple. But that's a gorgeous deck, I have the repro. It's readable if you forget Etteilla and just read intuitively, i.e., whatever bubbles up.

I think this deck is actually something like Etteilla twice removed, lol. If I remember correctly, there was an original Etteilla deck that didn't survive. Then there's the Grimaud, I think that's a later, posthumous Etteilla.
This one is even later, it's like Etteilla III or IV, lol. So if you're going to be an Etteilla fundie and go by the book, this is probably not the deck to do that anyway.

It's really random and I love the French keywords ("Bad, nasty woman"!)
The colors are gorgeous, it's got a great look but it doesn't really feel like a Tarot, it feels like a big oracle deck on mushrooms.

 

[Cerulean]

Jeu des Dames in 1870-1890...

This link has the reproduced deck images where the reviewer notes the tax stamp was 1890 but the copy was believed to be circa 1870 in a Paris museum.

http://www.wicce.com/1890egyptien.html

Kaplan has listed more than one maker of this version of French Jeu des Dames...if your deck was a 1890 survivor of many decades ago and no one really collected old cards, it might just have been worth as much as an older book...because people like to collect tarot cards now, it could be a few hundred dollars to what people are willing to pay on a good day.

Sometimes the Jeu des Dames versions also came with a box--I've seen the red leatherette kind of box and also a book called "Livre des Thoth". If it was minus a box and book, it might be less than a full deck with box and book enclosed.

You could email Intercol-London if you still had the box it came in and they might 'pair' it with an old deck if they have one to sell.

I remember my first 'rare' book was an 1897 John La Farge book of his impressions in Japan...pre-internet days and I was so thrilled, because I had just seen and researched this artist for his stained glass and artistic tours of Japan...I was in a used bookstore and I found myself paying $40, which was a great deal of money to me...being the "just-out-of-university-poor-working-clerical" sort.

I see on the internet that there are paperback reproductions of this John LaFarge text worth a dollar or so and the original 1897 book is still hovering at $39-$45.00 some fifteen-twenty years later!...it's still an old book, but not very interesting to many collectors.

I think my Lismon tarot also wasn't very interesting to people--it was available about a year before I saved up and no one else had bought it. I found out later that one was missing a full box and old book, so it was worth less to collectors.

Best wishes,

Cerulean

 

[The crowned one]

I saw those exact cards in a used bookstore last summer for $75 Canadian dollars. Didn't buy them, not that interested in Eteilla, but did look at them for a while so I remember the price.

I was on vacation and my sister was sick in the hotel room and so I was wasting a couple of hours poking around the numerous used bookstores in Sydney on Vancouver Island. I gather a lot of folks retire there, and then die eventually. The town is wall to wall used everything stores; kids come out to settle parents' estate, don't want the stuff etc, as it was explained to me by the friendly owner of one of them.

20 min from here, Do you recall the name of the store? I will be there in the AM! I suspect it was the "haunted" or more likely "Tanners" used books. Does that ring a bell? Long shot but for me worth looking into.

edit: oops another revived thread...no worries then. LOL I have to start checking dates of threads. By the By Victoria is the metaphysical capital of Canada and some say N. America.

 

[Alta]

20 min from here, Do you recall the name of the store? I will be there in the AM!

Well, it was on the main street going down to the harbour. It would be on the left, as you face towards the water. I don't recall it claiming to 'haunted'. The deck was in the glass case around the cash register area. However, this was now quite a while ago.