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- The Jerry's Nugget Whale [1]
The Jerry's Nugget Whale [1]
The backstory, market value, key players, and the presumed missing 40,000 decks. Buckle up for one hell of a ride.
One dollar. That’s what you would have paid back in the '90s for a deck of Jerry’s Nugget playing cards from the casino’s gift shop.
Some even recall buying decks for just fifty cents.
In the decades since then, an unused deck of Jerry's Nugget cards can fetch up to $500 on the secondary market. In March 2020, a Potter & Potter auction featured a dozen sealed decks of Jerry’s Nugget cards. They sold for an astonishing $3,841 (around $320 per deck).
The story of Jerry’s Nugget cards is filled with intrigue.
It’s a tale of an unknown number of decks stored for twenty years in Las Vegas—cards that were printed for the casino but never used as intended.
But this is also a story about magicians elevating the status of these cards within the magic community and one mysterious buyer who was rumored to have acquired thousands and thousands of decks and still holds them today.
It is a story of mystery—perhaps even deception.
What if the legend of Jerry’s Nugget playing cards isn’t what it seems?
The Anonymous Reseller
Now and then, a deck of Jerry’s Nuggets appears for sale on the secondary market. Spotting fakes is already a challenge—so much so that magicians like Lee Asher have created online guides to help differentiate genuine Jerry's Nuggets from counterfeits.
Last year, when we were researching potential stories to cover, we noticed something unusual: a mysterious US-based seller offloading Jerry’s Nugget decks at what appeared to be an alarming rate.
It’s common for an occasional deck to pop up for sale. But what caught our attention for this user was the slow, calculated way they were reselling some of the most sought-after magic playing cards. They sold an average of four decks per week amongst listings for random books and DVDs.
They did not provide a backstory in their listings—something usually seen when accounts resell large quantities. Elsewhere, at the time, another account selling a brick of the decks said they'd bought the decks at the auction of a magician who had recently passed away. But with the anonymous seller sharing no backstory and with such a small public sales history visible online, it was hard to determine how long they'd been offloading decks.
No one knows how many decks exist.
Jerry's Nugget playing cards' legendary status hinges on perceived scarcity. If someone had secretly stockpiled a massive collection and were drip-feeding them into the market, it would be controversial at best. At worst, it could be considered market manipulation.
We began downloading the anonymous seller's sales history–which only displays for a short window of time before vanishing forever. Past reviews didn’t mention the cards, suggesting the offloading began recently, but we couldn't be sure. It became clear that the best course of action was to patiently monitor the account and see how many decks they offloaded over the next year.
Today, there is almost no trace of the anonymous seller's Jerry's Nugget sold listings online, so if they had sold decks in the past and those buyers did not leave reviews, we would have no way of knowing those sales took place.
In the first four weeks of tracking this anonymous seller, they sold $3,089 worth of Jerry’s Nugget decks. At the time, we had no idea how long the pattern would continue. As we waited to see how many decks the account would resell, we began digging into the backstory of the iconic cards. What we found was surprising.
The Backstory
Jerry’s Nugget playing cards were initially printed in 1970 for use at the Jerry’s Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. The casino, founded in 1964 by Jerry Lodge and Jerry Stamis, is still in operation today.
However, these decks were never used at the tables. The exact reason remains unclear. Some believe the design made it too easy for cheaters to mark them.
After being printed in Cincinnati, Ohio, the decks were shipped to Las Vegas, where they sat in storage for many years.
As the story goes, eventually, someone at the casino decided to clear space and move the forgotten decks to the gift shop. They were sold for as little as $1 per deck, sometimes even given away for free. Over time, the price rose to $2.
By 1999, they had completely sold out.
Until now, no one had publicly verified the total number of decks.
It took years and the influence of key figures in the magic community to elevate these decks to legendary status.
But one thing is objectively true: these cards can never be printed again—and that is part of the reason behind their fame. As explained in blog posts,
What made these playing cards special is that they were produced with a top-of-the-line grade of USPCC card-stock that was only produced for a limited period of time. It is thinner than most contemporary playing cards, and is simply not available today.
What's more, modern printing methods simply can't replicate the original process used to produce these playing cards. This involved a cotton roller that would paint the embossing pattern on one side of the card, followed by a varnished finish that was applied by a dip coat technique. Environmental restrictions also mean that the chemical finish used for this has been abandoned.
Jerry’s Nugget cards also have distinctive features that help differentiate real decks from counterfeits. These include vertical lines on the card faces, a vintage long tuck flap on the box, and a perforated tax stamp seal slightly positioned to the left. According to William Kalush, founder of the Expert Playing Card Company, the paper used for these decks was likely experimental and only used in a handful of productions.
These are the objective facts that make Jerry’s Nugget decks collectible. But facts alone don’t explain their legendary status. That took something else.
The Hype Status
A few key figures in the magic community helped shape the reputation of Jerry’s Nugget playing cards.
One is magician Lee Asher, widely regarded as an expert on playing cards. Asher has extensively documented the unique properties of Jerry’s Nuggets, written guides on spotting fakes, and regularly shares insights with collectors.
Asher even created the Wikipedia page for the cards and played a key role in producing the 2019 reprint of the original Jerry's Nugget cards.
Dan and Dave Buck, widely credited for popularising cardistry, also contributed to the cards' fame. The twin cardists frequently used Jerry’s Nuggets in their early 2,000's videos, promoting them as great cards for cardistry while sometimes making fun of their unique fame.
However, the cards were first prominently featured in Frank Simon’s book Versatile Card Magic (1983), where every instructional image showed Earl Nelson using Jerry’s Nugget decks.
As Lee Asher told us:
"Many don't realize that Frank was a film director, giving him a sharp eye for aesthetics. In a sea of Bee, Bicycle, and Steamboat back designs, something about the bold, gaudy look of 1970's white-border casino decks captivated him. Frank Simon recognized their potential as iconic – a quality that still captivates magicians, cardists, and collectors today."
Other magic legends, including Dai Vernon, Larry Jennings, and Ed Marlo, were also seen using them.
David Copperfield's executive producer, Chris Kenner, and mentalist Michael Weber are also said to have publicly shared an early interest in these cards. Weber even brought an unopened gross (144 decks) to Cardistry Con in 2023—when valued at $300 per deck, as the Cardistry Con's official Facebook post of the box states, that represents $43,000.
Source: Cardistry Con
Once again, the total number of Jerry’s Nugget decks remains unknown. But, their market value has always been based on perceived scarcity. If more decks exist than collectors assume, could it dramatically alter their worth? And who's to say there isn't one person, of several, stockpiling a majority stake?
Counterfeiters have taken advantage of the hype. In 2008, the market was flooded with high-quality fake decks that looked nearly identical to the originals but poorly handled and worn.
Looking back over the years, it seems the fame of these cards was the result of a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of factors—one we likely won’t see again for a long time. We asked Lee Asher why their reputation has endured:
"Who's to say? Maybe it's the iconic design or the allure of old-school Las Vegas casinos. Perhaps it's the influence of Frank Simon and Earl Nelson, who shot photos in 1983 for a book that generations of card magicians would later treasure. Then there's me, evangelizing JNuggs during my university days at UNLV. The fact that the deck sold out in 1999 only solidified its exclusivity. Did the rise of the internet in the 2000's help boost their popularity? Was demand driven because people tend to want things that are hard to get? A combination of all these factors and more likely helped elevate Jerry's Nugget playing cards to legendary status."
We began to wonder why the hype around these cards seemed to exist exclusively within the magic community.
The 40,000 Missing Decks
We continued to monitor the anonymous seller while trying to verify their backstory. Then, we uncovered something even more intriguing—mentions of an anonymous buyer acquiring 40,000 decks in 1999.
If these decks are valued at $300 per day, as the Cardistry Con organizers said, that could represent $12,000,000 of stockpiled decks. If true, 40,000 decks would surely represent a massive controlling stake; how many decks could have been printed in the first place?
But the number, 40,000 missing decks, kept coming up again and again—twelve million dollars worth of rare playing cards–supposedly unaccounted for.
How would someone even offload that many decks without influencing the market price for every Jerry's Nugget collector globally? This was becoming a bigger story (millions of dollars bigger) than we anticipated.
How many decks were produced in the first place?
Were there really 40,000 missing decks?
We needed to find out.
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