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.

Gallesi told us that our story was striking for multiple reasons—first, the mystery surrounding the total number of decks in existence, and second, Dominique Duviver's outsized role.

Contrary to what we expected, she suggested that not knowing how many decks exist might actually increase demand. It’s an irrational trigger: when a new product appears, the lack of information can make people even more eager to buy, driven by the fear they might not get another chance.

As for Duvivier’s unique position, she confirmed that his purchase may have skewed the entire market. She also noted that she had never encountered a case where someone held such a massive amount of stock purely for personal use.

Gallesi explained that in the world of collectibles like Pokémon cards, it's increasingly common to see the disruptive presence of so-called "scalpers"—people who buy up as much product as possible to resell it at inflated prices.

She also pointed out that many of these buyers don’t belong to the community itself. They're simply opportunists, jumping in to flip products for profit. Could that be the case with our mysterious eBay seller?

The term "whale" isn’t typically used in the Pokémon or collectibles world. It’s hard to define what qualifies someone for that label. The term "whale" is more common in crypto circles.

In crypto, holding over 1% of a currency’s total supply might make you a whale. So unless Jerry's Nugget Casino printed a million and a half decks (which we can confidently say they did not), there's only one person in this story we could safely call a whale.

Around this time, we finally heard back from one of the sources at USPCC. They explained that detailed records from before 2009 aren’t maintained, making it impossible for USPCC to determine the exact number of cards printed in 1970.

We went back and asked if they could provide a rough estimate based on a typical first run of print for casino cards at the time. They said this information had to be kept private due to the nature of the casino business and contracts.

We were still waiting for responses from insiders in the casino and gambling world. Perhaps they could give us a reliable estimate of the total number of decks. While piecing together the bigger picture, we took a closer look at part of this story that we were yet to cover–its recent history.

One More Squeeze

Jerry's Nugget decks have circulated on the resale market for years. Even companies like Art of Play and various private collectors have sold their stock.

Prices on the secondary market have fluctuated—today, you can find these cards for around $119, whereas a decade ago, they could easily fetch double or even more than triple that.

When we first contacted one of the original advocates for Jerry's Nuggets, Lee Asher, he wrote that he believes prices will probably rise again:

Asher was one of the first to help popularize Jerry's Nuggets and even wrote a guide for magicians to spot counterfeit decks. We knew he played a crucial role in the 2019 reprint–more on that soon–and had previously sold decks from his collection, though we were unsure how many.

After we published the first part of this story, one of our readers emailed us to explain that he bought a deck from Asher in the 2000s, believing it would be a good investment.

The reader shared that Asher would host sales events on his website. The most recent sales we've seen were in 2015, when Asher advertised the sale of 30 decks of Jerry's Nuggets for a total of $9,249. The year before, he advertised 50 decks.

After seeing the marketing emails, we followed up with Asher for more details on the sale events, but he said he wasn’t able to share additional information at the time.

Alessia Gallesi explained that it's very common in collectible markets to see experts or influencers like Asher—people who both contribute to a product’s fame and sell it directly to customers.

Although some people dislike the approach, she told us that most within the community are generally okay with it—and the same seems to be true in the magic world.

In 2019, there was a licensed reprint of Jerry's Nuggets. For the first time, official decks with the striking design were available at much more affordable rates. In the ad copy on Vanishing Inc., Lee Asher is credited as a key figure behind the reprint:

As detailed by the Cincinnati Enquirer, William Kalush, founder of the Expert Playing Card Company, made several phone calls, and after months of waiting, he was connected to one of the owners of the Jerry's Nugget casino.

When we first contacted Asher, we asked him about the timing of the reprint: what led to its timing, and what made acquiring the rights so challenging?

Asher replied:

Over 4,000 people backed the crowdfunding, grossing an astonishing $477,229 via a Kickstarter campaign. Two versions of the deck were produced. The Modern Feel, printed by USPCC, featured thin-crushed stock. The Vintage Feel, produced by EPCC, used a unique stock designed to mimic the original 1970 print run.

Curious about how non-magicians view the cards, we reached out to The Congress Guy—a respected playing card collector and expert who has also researched the history of Jerry's Nugget decks. He is not a magician.

Here's what he told us:

But that's not all. The Jerry's Nugget hype had already inspired reprints—most notably the parody deck Chicken Nugget, created by Hanson Chien. Other fanatics also sold merch and screen-printed T-shirts.

The design's influence runs deeper. Jerry's Nugget decks helped shape the appetite among magicians and cardists for collectible decks with bold, iconic designs—paving the way for brands like Fontaines.

Many early cardists opted for Jerry's Nugget cards due to the way the back design looked when spun during moves. A similar shape can be seen in Fontaines.

Fontaine took the market by storm in the 2010s, with decks quickly selling out and collectors snapping them up as long-term investments.

The Expert At The Card Table

After putting out a call, we received an email from Anthony Curtis—a seasoned blackjack player, gambler, author, and publisher. Back in 1983, he founded Huntington Press, now considered the oldest and most respected publisher of gambling and Las Vegas-related titles in the world.

We had contacted him, hoping he could help estimate the number of Jerry's Nugget decks printed in 1970. Since the cards were never used as intended and there was only one run, we needed only to know the standard first print run quantity for a deck of cards at a casino this size at that time.

Although he couldn't help finding the number, he reported an estimate of the number of decks of cards a casino goes through yearly. That could help understand how many cards they would order on a typical print.

A small casino with 29 table games might go through 60 decks of cards per day—just under 22,000 decks per year. Factoring in some variation, the total likely falls somewhere between 23,000 and 27,000 decks annually.

This estimate, provided to Curtis by Andrew Uyal, is from 2022—numbers from the 1970s were likely lower.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the number of tables. What started as a quest to find out how many Jerry's Nuggets there were had now become a quest to count the number of game tables at a casino in the 1970s.

We contacted Al Rogers, editor of Current Blackjack News, hoping he could provide details on the number of tables at Jerry's Nugget Casino in the 1970s.

After digging through archived issues of the magazine, he discovered that in 1979 and into the early 1980s, Jerry's Nugget typically operated 12 blackjack tables.

That's as far as the trail led. And while the whole picture remains out of reach—Were there more tables for other games? How many in total? And how many decks did they print, really?—We're confident no one has gotten this close before (though, we're also left wondering if Lee Asher and Expert Playing Card Company asked the casino's owners if they knew the total quantity in existence).

What we do know is that Dominique Duvivier bought 14,400 decks. Did the casino only print 15,000 or 20,000 decks? The most we've ever verifiably seen anyone else own is a gross (144).

Many of the early fanatics could have bought the whole stash the same way Duvivier did–you cannot help but wonder if they even knew the decks were limited and if they regretted not having the audacity and conviction of Duviver, who cleared out the casino, transported them home by boat and stored them across multiple safe locations.

Collectors worldwide own individual Jerry's Nugget decks, which, for many, continue to drop in value (they sell today for $119).

Lee Asher told us he has "a small personal stash." He's now selling a new rare casino deck named Askals on his site.

Dominique Duvivier continues to perform with his favourite Jerry's Nugget playing cards. He's pictured holding the cards in every photo we've seen of him performing online.

It seems Duvivier is our Jerry's Nugget Whale.

The End Where We Began

Forty-five decks of rare Jerry's Nugget cards meticulously offloaded week by week were ominous to us as we monitored the anonymous reseller. As you can imagine, one question consumed us week by week as we checked in on the account: How many decks are they possibly going to sell?

Having taken another look since then, we can see that the account has sold multiple magic books that a dedicated magician would have owned. We can also see that they sold at least two Jerry's Nugget cards more than a year before the batch of forty-five. Those two decks were noted in reviews left by their buyers.

Besides that, all we really knew was that the account was created in the year 2,000 and had since sold 12,000 items. We also learned the account was based in a small town in California, USA. There was no profile photo, no name, and no identifying information in their about page or listing descriptions.

We would be lying if we said we did not wonder, at the time, whether this anonymous account, created one year after Jerry's Nugget cards sold out in 1999, had been secretly offloading decks for the past twenty-five years.

The truth is that we do not know, but it strikes us as unlikely. As we investigated this story, the anonymous seller seemed less and less like a main character in what escalated to be a story much more significant than we anticipated.

We never planned to identify the reseller publicly or privately. In the first part of this story, we didn't share their state, and we waited three months to publish our research so that their listing history would no longer be online for people to seek.

But the closer we came to realising that this account was likely not a well-known magician offloading their stockpile, the more comfortable we became with the idea of reaching out to them directly. What might they think of all of this? Could they tell us where they got their decks?

First, we messaged their selling account. As they are a very active seller, we expected a reply, but we have not heard back. We then decided to message an account on Instagram with the same username as the reseller in case they happened to be owned and run by the same person.

To our surprise, they replied, though it wasn't exactly what we hoped for. This was their response:

We never did get the answers we wanted from the reseller. Like so many of the details surrounding Jerry's Nuggets—their early buyers, their most prominent advocates, the money they made, the total supply, and the actual value of these supposedly rare decks—it will all remain a mystery.