One dollar. That’s what you would have paid back in the '90s for a deck of Jerry’s Nugget playing cards from the casino’s gift shop.
Some even recall buying decks for just fifty cents.
In the decades since then, an unused deck of Jerry's Nugget cards can fetch up to $500 on the secondary market. In March 2020, a Potter & Potter auction featured a dozen sealed decks of Jerry’s Nugget cards. They sold for an astonishing $3,841 (around $320 per deck).
The story of Jerry’s Nugget cards is filled with intrigue.
It’s a tale of an unknown number of decks stored for twenty years in Las Vegas—cards that were printed for the casino but never used as intended.
But this is also a story about magicians elevating the status of these cards within the magic community and one mysterious buyer who was rumored to have acquired thousands and thousands of decks and still holds them today.
It is a story of mystery—perhaps even deception.
What if the legend of Jerry’s Nugget playing cards isn’t what it seems?
The Anonymous Reseller
Now and then, a deck of Jerry’s Nuggets appears for sale on the secondary market. Spotting fakes is already a challenge—so much so that magicians like Lee Asher have created online guides to help differentiate genuine Jerry's Nuggets from counterfeits.
Last year, when we were researching potential stories to cover, we noticed something unusual: a mysterious US-based seller offloading Jerry’s Nugget decks at what appeared to be an alarming rate.
It’s common for an occasional deck to pop up for sale. But what caught our attention for this user was the slow, calculated way they were reselling some of the most sought-after magic playing cards. They sold an average of four decks per week amongst listings for random books and DVDs.
They did not provide a backstory in their listings—something usually seen when accounts resell large quantities. Elsewhere, at the time, another account selling a brick of the decks said they'd bought the decks at the auction of a magician who had recently passed away. But with the anonymous seller sharing no backstory and with such a small public sales history visible online, it was hard to determine how long they'd been offloading decks.
No one knows how many decks exist.
Jerry's Nugget playing cards' legendary status hinges on perceived scarcity. If someone had secretly stockpiled a massive collection and were drip-feeding them into the market, it would be controversial at best. At worst, it could be considered market manipulation.
We began downloading the anonymous seller's sales history–which only displays for a short window of time before vanishing forever. Past reviews didn’t mention the cards, suggesting the offloading began recently, but we couldn't be sure. It became clear that the best course of action was to patiently monitor the account and see how many decks they offloaded over the next year.
Today, there is almost no trace of the anonymous seller's Jerry's Nugget sold listings online, so if they had sold decks in the past and those buyers did not leave reviews, we would have no way of knowing those sales took place.
In the first four weeks of tracking this anonymous seller, they sold $3,089 worth of Jerry’s Nugget decks. At the time, we had no idea how long the pattern would continue. As we waited to see how many decks the account would resell, we began digging into the backstory of the iconic cards. What we found was surprising.
