Wednesday, October 28, 2015

#605 PIATNIK - TOLLE AUTOS (Around 1972 and 1977)


Decks of cards (“technical” quartets) with cars are much more sought-after than decks about other topics, I can understand this, since there are much more people interested in cars than in planes, tanks, boats or whatever.

I also like cars more than any other vehicle, so I am always aware if I find one of these on a flea market or somewhere else. Both decks were bought in flea markets, the oldest “Tolle Autos” was not cheap (I think I payed 10 Euros for it), while I can´t remember how much did I pay for the other, but surely not much.



I wanted to talk shortly about decks of cards and “updates”. It is common for card manufacturers to periodically adapt their best-selling references with newer and more interesting pictures, so the deck remains modern, and it sells better. Tolle Autos was one of the decks that Piatnik has released a few times during their history, and I am showing today two of these versions.

The first one has reference number 281 and presents an old design of the cover card with five flags, a bigger picture, the “Tolle Series” header and a “mit Super-Trumpf” bubble. It is interesting that Piatnik coloured the German flag wrong…



The “Tolle Series” also included: Tolle Loks, Tolle Schiffe, Tolle Jets, Tolle Coupés, Tolle Flitzer, Tolle Bauten…


Reference number 281 previouly belonged to Kasperltheater from 1955. We do not exactly know when was this quartett released, but it was probably around 1968 in 1972.



The second deck has the reference number 4221 it was released in 1973 1977. If our guess is right, that would mean, that this update came after around 5 years. The new series is called “Super Trumpf”, and as a “gift” with this deck, you got “3 Extra Sammelnblätter Quartettkarten”, that is, 3 cards to collect. If you bought enough decks from the Super Trumpf series, you might end with a complete deck sometime. As you can notice, the three cards were still in the box when I bought it, and they actually come from an old quartett about cars.


If you compare both decks, they are pretty different. Some families are completely different. For example, family 2 goes from “Schwimm-und Flugautos” to “Spitzen-Autos”, or family 5 goes from “Pininfarina Studien” to “Funmobiles”. The families that keep their name include 1 or two new cards and keep the rest from the old deck.

I took the pictures at different times, so in one case the families are ordered differently from the other. Sorry about that.

Later I also got a "Heiße Öfen" Quartett by Piatnik, and interestingly, it also contains some cards which are identical to other in these quartetts. This deck will be shown some other time.

FACTS AND FIGURES:
  • Name: TOLLE AUTOS (Nr. 281 and 4221)
  • Year: Around 1968 and 1973  Around 1972 and 1977
  • Company: Piatnik (Austria)

4 comments:

  1. I date these decks completely different:

    The 'Die tolle Serie' should be from 1972. It's the 3rd Tolle Autos version. The first one was 1970, and then each year a new one was released (until 1979 at least). 1972 for this version is pretty much confirmed.

    The one with +3 Extra is definitely 1977. All Piatnik's with this front card design were released in 1977. There's no doubt about that.

    About your 'Heiße Öfen': It's basically the successor of 'Tolle Autos'. There are 2 (or 3) versions: 1982: Tolle Schlitten (red race oldtimer). 1984: Heiße Öfen(red race oldtimer), 1986: Heiße Öfen (grey alfa romeo)

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    Replies
    1. Hi, many thanks for this new comment.

      As I said in a previous reply, I do not have any catalogue or guide to quartetts. I only have a PDF (it is actually a XLS printed in a PDF) I once found on google. In this document, some data is included, but no pictures or variants.

      According to this source, the Tolle Autos quartett number 4221 is from 1973, while the oldest one does not include a year. I looked for quartetts with a similar reference number, and they were from 1968, so that's why I chose those two years.

      As you say, there are many versions of each title, but I have no means to determine which one comes first, which second, and so on. Do you have any kind of guide? The one by Herbert Kutter maybe?

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    2. A good source is Quartettblog, google Quartettblog Tolle Autos or search on Quartettblog. There's basically a full listing by year of the Tolle Autos series.

      This list is pretty much confirmed by catalogues and experts. It's especially easy to date a Piatnik deck that's made 1976 or later, and in almost every year a new front card design was used. And typically you can also date the older ones very well, as usually with 'Führerschein' is 1975, 'Spezialistenpass' is 1973 or 1974, flags left bottom is often 1972 etc.

      Some of these characteristics you can find here:
      http://quartette.bplaced.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=188&p=1044#p1044

      Herbert Kutter stops at 1971 or something if I remember correctly, so it is not of much help in this case.

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    3. Hi, yes, I am already in the feed for that blog. I commented a few times and even wrote the owner a few emails, most of them dealing with Tiger and Star. Very nice guy, however, I do not counter-check what I write here with what he has written, because I assumed my sources were correct... I'll do that from now on, since my sources do not seem to be very reliable.

      Or I should visit "Quartette Forum" more often! That link is great, I'll check if there are more threads like that one when I find the time.

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