#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)