Pit. John Waddington Ltd., United Kingdom. Bespoke gaming deck, 65 cards + rule leaflet + bull and bear rules insert. Size: 57mm x 89mm.
Deck make-up:
Cards: 63 cards featuring commodities: wheat, barley, corn, rye, oats, hay, flax (9 of each).
Extras: bull card, bear card.
Commodity-trading game, originally dating from 1903, though the edition here seems to be from the 1950s or 1960s. It was invented by noted psychic Edgar Cayce. The game is American in origin (flax, rye and corn are not grown to a large extent in the UK).
Each player, by trading their cards with the other players, attempts to obtain all nine cards in any one of the listed commodities. The rules modestly describe the game as, "The jolliest game ever invented for an informal good time," and, "The greatest of all party games." Not half as much fun as nude Twister, I'll bet. The version here is a variant which includes two extra cards called bull and bear – these function as penalty and bonus cards, respectively, when you get all nine cards in a commodity. No doubt these extra cards make the game even more fun!
The game is still available, though with an updated set of commodities and tweaked rules.
Click on any card to explore the design.
(Comments or corrections, please e-mail: Click to see e-mail address.)
Card image size, below:
Instructions that come with Pit.