Cary Collection of Playing Cards

The Cary Collection of Playing Cards, held at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Yale University in the United States, is one of the most significant assemblages of materials relating to playing cards and related ephemera in North America.

[1] The collection is comparable to card collections held by the United States Playing Card Company, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Deutsches Spielkarten Museum, and the British Museum.

As a result, the Cary Collection has close to, if not the, greatest variety of both types of cards.

Her donations were significant, spanning approximately five hundred years of the history of the playing card and reaching as far back as the 15th century.

Since then, the collection has continued to grow due to a generous bequest that accompanied the Cary's donation and that stipulates that the money can only be used for the purchase of playing cards and related materials.