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Hana-Trump playing cards are Western Nintendo playing cards with images of Nintendo's Hanafuda cards on the faces, allowing players to play both standard western card games and hanafuda games. They are known to have been made by Nintendo from as early as the 1930's to as late as the 1990's.
Features[]
On the face of each card, the indices of a trump playing card are placed on the upper left and lower right corner, while the actual images of the trump playing card are placed on the upper right and lower left corner. On the center of the face, an image of a hanafuda card is placed. The placement of the company name on the hanafuda designs are different from their standard hanafuda cards in that they are written in English instead of Japanese. The queen of hearts has the label Nintendo Playing Card Co. Ltd on the face while the queen of clubs just has N.P.C. (which means "Nintendo Playing Cards"). (Older decks from the 1940's and earlier has the texts "The Standard playing Card Co." and "S.P.C. Co." respectively.)
Each deck contains 54 cards plus 1 or 2 jokers. A sample card may also be included. The ranks of the trump playing cards correspond to the month number of the hanafuda cards. For example, a 3 of hearts has the image of a cherry tree on it (Cherry is the flower that corresponds to March, which is the 3rd month). However, because hanafuda has only 12 months, and trump playing cards have 13 ranks, this means there is no corresponding hanafuda month for the kings. Nintendo's solution to this is to print various tokens used in the hanafuda game "Hachi-hachi" on the king cards.
Hana-Trump playing cards came in 2 sizes, but they are all smaller than a standard Nintendo playing card deck.
Models[]
The first and most common Hana-Trump model is the model No. 87, which was sold from the 1930's to the 1960's. The back design was available in red or blue.
There is also the No. 807, which is the same product as the No. 87 but with a different back design (which also came in red or blue), known to be sold from the 1950's to the 1960's.
The dimensions of both the No. 87 and No. 807 are "semi-small size", 6cm x 4cm, which is only a litter bigger than the dimensions of a traditional hanafuda card. In addition, both decks have a starch-coated papery finish, making them feel rougher than a standard western playing card deck, even among Nintendo's own products at the time.
Nintendo also released a larger (but still small) Hana-Trump deck in the 1960's, which they continued to manufacture and sell until the 1990's. They are "mini bridge size", 7.5cm x 4.5cm, and are plastic-coated (but not 100% plastic). It is listed under different model numbers: No. 8007 in the 1960's, No. 307 in the 1970's, and No. 4007 in the 1980's and 1990's; However, these numbers all refer to the same product.
The back design of the larger Hana-Trump deck is different from the No. 87 and No. 807 decks, and came in red or black. Also, unlike the No. 87 and No. 807, which featured a portrait of Napoleon in its Joker card(s), the larger Hana-Trump deck only used the typical "jester holding a star" design on its Joker card(s).
Gallery[]
Notes[]
- Nintendo's model numbers for Hana-Trump (No. 87, No. 807, and No. 8007) are Japanese number puns (goro-awase) for the word "hana", meaning 'flower'.
- Nintendo also made another type of hanafuda card deck on western playing card stock called "Hana Cards". Unlike Hana-Trump, these cards do not have any western playing card suits or ranks on them, and are designed solely for playing hanafuda games.