Drake edition of Expert at the Card Table

[BrettS3]

Hi all,

I have a decent copy of Erdnase's Expert at the Card Table. It's a Drake edition, and I'm trying to find more info about it. everythingerdnase.com has an image of the same edition, but little additional information. I'm wondering (a) how common is this particular variation of the Drake editions, and (b) approximtely when was it printed in relation to the other editions.

My particular edition is the standard Drake cover, only solid two-color and missing the K and hearts.
The condition is decent - for a ~100 year old book.
Picture is attached.

Does anyone know anything specific about this edition?

Cheers,
Brett

 

[BrettS3]

I received a reply about this through the back channels from Jason England. I'm reposting his comments below so others can read:

They are fairly common. I've had at least a dozen pass through my hands over the years and I've seen many more on eBay that I didn't bid on or buy from the seller. No one really knows what year those started appearing for sale, but one hypothesis is that they came out during World War I when printers were trying to save money. Eliminating the red ink from the cover illustration would have done that, as well as eliminating some of the pages from the rear of the book. A "proper" Erdnase should be 205 pages. Often these green paperback Drakes have either 190 or 176 pages in them. That's another way the printer might have saved a few bucks on the new print runs - he didn't have to print all of the signatures that make up the bound book! t don't know if I believe that hypothesis, but I don't have a better one. It could have just been an accident.

We do know that Drake dated most of his very early printings of the book - the first Drakes were in 1905. For a while there were no dates on the books and then he added them again in the 1930s. So best guess for these undated green cover editions is 1910 - 1920s.

Yours appears to be in good condition and should bring anywhere from $50 - 100 or so if you were to auction it on eBay.