Centennial Olympic Games Collection

The hundredth anniversary of the modern Olympic Games was a spectacle indeed. Held in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States, these games came to embody the American approach to commercialized athletics. And, depending on who you ask, they did the unthinkable - they operated at a profit. Whether or not this is a good thing I leave to your own sense of how to calculate the cost in lost intangibles. But it was definitely a significant result. It showed that American commercialized athletics can work on the world stage.

Part of the success was the major publicity for the games, played out for years before they actually started. Major corporate sponsors were lined up, and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars in fees and donated time, money and construction for the privilege of having their corporate logos emblazoned on the Centennial Olympics. And souvenirs were manufactured by the millions. One class of souvenirs was playing cards, and the lion's share of those were produced by the U.S. Playing Card Company. The decks produced were many, spanning as wide a variety as they could manage, appealing to children, sports collectors and history buffs. This deck is the history buff's deck, filled with historical posters from past Olympics and occasional bits of trivia about the Games. It's worthwhie noting the pleasant lack of additional commercialism within the cards - CocaCola does not appear here.

The set of posters shown seems to be the only set released by the ACOG (the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games), as they show up in other decks as well. I have a set of 24 miniature decks with the backs decorated with these posters, and they are exactly the same. They managed to dig up at least one poster for each modern Olympics, both summer and winter, which is no small feat, given how little survives from those first few Games. The remaining cards contain interesting bits of trivia about the modern games, including the impact of the two World Wars, and the genesis of the modern games under Baron Pierre de Coubertin. A visually appealing deck, it also contains small bits of history fascinating to most anyone interested in the Olympics.

All images © 1993, USPC, the IOC and the ACOG, displayed here for commentary, analysis and appreciation only.