Foundation deals up history in playing cards|[12/21/06]

Published 12:00 am Thursday, December 21, 2006

Playing cards can now be a way to brush up on Vicksburg history and a special deck can be a good pick for a last-minute stocking stuffer, said Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation director Nancy Bell.

The foundation is selling historic Vicksburg cards, complete with images of buildings, monuments, boats and even can-can dancers.

The 52 cards, plus two wild cards, have images of notable sites around town, such as the Shlenker House, Duff Green Mansion and Anchuca. Waterways Experiment Station and the Old Constitution Fire House also have a place in the deck. The Sprague, the sternwheel steamboat that burned in 1974, has two cards.

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&#8220They’re not all buildings,” Bell said, &#8220but it’s still an important part of Vicksburg’s history.”

The idea for using the cards as a fundraiser came from a publication to which the foundation subscribes. Bell decided bringing the cards to Vicksburg would be a way to provide tourists with a token of Vicksburg’s history.

&#8220We get a lot of requests from people – mostly tourists – wanting to know more about the architecture here,” she said.

Beginning last spring, Bell started pulling photographs from the foundation’s collection to use on the cards. From there, she said she contacted foundation members to give them the first shot at sponsoring a card.

It didn’t take long, she said, before local businesses and organizations picked up on the concept. The sponsorship’s ranged from $200 for ace cards, $125 for jack, queen and king cards and $75 for cards 2, through 10. Bell said.

Each card, backed with an image of the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum painted by local artist Jean Blue, has a photo, a line about its history and the sponsor’s name.

The card sets were made by Newts Cards of Ohio, a company that has made similar sets for other historical societies, Bell said.

&#8220When I saw this, I thought, ‘That sounds like something we could do,’” she said.

The decks are on sale for $10 at Twigs, Paper Plus, Peterson’s Art & Antiques, Frederick’s, Sassafras, the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum and Vicksburg Main Street. The historic foundation receives all the profits.

Bell said the next project will be to offer a Monopoly game complete with Vicksburg’s historic landmarks.