Nintendo playing cards featuring Marilyn Monroe

Vintage company documents are a great resource for historians and collectors. Like this Nintendo Playing Cards report from the 1950s, which was covered in full in a previous post.

It shows the range of playing card designs offered by Nintendo at the time.

At the center of the page featuring 'PR cards' is a deck with one of the most iconic images to come out of the United States in the 20th century: Marilyn Monroe lying on a bed sheet.

Although the inclusion of this card in the company report confirmed it was part of Nintendo's product catalogue at the time, we had never seen an actual copy.

Until today!

This copy was recently discovered by Nintendo playing card collector Fabrice Heilig, and I acquired it on his behalf.