The Jerry's Nugget Whale [3]

I ended the call.

Calling the casino felt pointless.

We tried emailing, too, but we never heard back.

Nobody seems to have definitive information about these cards. We know at least one magician has interacted directly with one of the casino's owners–more on this soon–but it's unclear whether they ever asked how many decks of "rare" Jerry's Nugget cards are even in existence.

We're on the quest to uncover the whole story around the Jerry's Nugget playing cards. Printed in 1970 and kept hidden for years, they were then sold at the casino gift shop for as low as one dollar per deck, only to become one of the rarest decks among magicians. Prices hit $500 on the secondary market at their peak.

• The Jerry's Nugget Whale: Part One

• The Jerry's Nugget Whale: Part Two

We've since discovered the existence of what might be a Jerry's Nugget "whale"–a French magician with a stockpile of 14,000 decks. That number sounds extraordinarily high, and one might assume that a quantity that significant represents a controlling stake in the number of decks worldwide.

To figure out whether that is the case, we needed to establish two data points.

Firstly, the percentage of the total market someone must own to be a "whale" who can manipulate the price of everyone's items. We found a collectibles expert who would speak to us on this.

Secondly, we needed to try to establish the number of decks that ever existed. We were having much less luck with this; USPCC was proving challenging to contact, the casino wasn't replying to us, and yes, it did reach the point where I actually phoned the casino's front desk out of desperation.

And then there was the anonymous reseller we were tracking who had set us off down this rabbit hole in the first place. The account sold its final two decks of cards on December 13th, 2024, for $339.99, a price which marks a significant drop since their peak value of $500 per deck–we'll get into some of the reasons the price may have lowered in recent years soon.

Still, in the eight weeks we spent monitoring them, the anonymous US account sold 45 decks for a total of $6,899.67. Because reviews left on their account stay public forever, we could see they'd sold at least two decks more than a year ago, too. But their full sales history vanishes after a ninety-day window.

We downloaded the sales history and monitored their account in case they began listing more decks. Three months after they sold their final decks, we published the first part of this story.

It was only then that we found the seller's exact username was in use on Instagram. Not only that, but the Instagram user was located in the same Californian town as the seller. We decided to reach out to them. They had set us off on this investigation, so we felt they deserved to have the final word.

Besides that, we knew we wanted to learn where their stash had come from and how many they'd sold previously.

The Number Of Decks

We started contacting people at the United States Playing Card Company, former gamblers, and casino experts. We asked everyone to provide data or their best estimate on how many Jerry's Nugget cards were printed in 1970.

While waiting for replies, we hopped on a call with someone who knows far more about collectibles than we do.

Alessia Gallesi is an Italian YouTuber expert in the field of Pokémon cards. She knows a lot and has seen many examples of market manipulation within collectible playing cards. The Pokémon cards market is astronomically bigger, more influential, and valuable than that of playing cards for magicians.

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