Trip report: UK Games Expo!

Today a crony and I went to UK Games Expo in Birmingham. It was very good; I bought all kinds of stuff. But the most historically-relevant thing I bought was a deck of replica 16th-century German playing cards from The Historic Games Shop. These things are pretty cool: they are replicas of a deck from 1588, and they have four German suits: cups, vases, ink stamps and books. 

Note that the four of vases is an illustrated card: even the number cards are illustrated in this deck, like in a Tarot deck. 

The cards are a little bit flimsier than your modern deck, which apparently is more or less how they would be. I really like these and I need to incorporate them into a game in some way. I even spent an hour or so trying to figure out how they should be used in my history class, but nothing comes to mind just yet. 

The guy I spoke to at the company's stall was a cool dude, very friendly. I'm going to have to get some more of their stuff at some point.