{"product_id":"hoyles-book-of-games-white-pine-county-high-school-ely-nevada-1940","title":"Hoyles Book of Games, White Pine County High School, Ely Nevada, 1940","description":"\u003ch3\u003eThe Piece\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHoyle's Complete and Authoritative Book of Games, Autograph Edition, published by Blue Ribbon Books, Garden City, New York. Tan suede-finish cloth over boards. The front carries one thing only, a facsimile of Edmond Hoyle's signature stamped in black. No title, no publisher, nothing else. The rear board is plain.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe title page repeats the signature beneath an oval cameo portrait of Hoyle in profile, marked Trade Mark, over the line With Complete Instructions in the Forcing-Approach System of Contract Bridge and the latest Contract Bridge Laws. The copyright page is dated 1940, Blue Ribbon Books, 14 West 49th Street, New York, and stacks the chain of ownership behind it: copyright 1907 by The McClure Company, 1913 and 1914 by A. L. Burt Company, 1926 and 1929 by R. F. Foster, 1931 and 1934 by A. L. Burt Company.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFour hundred odd pages and the contents are not genteel. Backgammon at 16, with a full diagram of the board and the bar points. Whist and contract bridge leads through the nineties, including Foster's Eleven Rule set out with a worked hand. Draw poker at 286, covering the ante, the straddle, the raise, and a section headed Jack Pots explaining that no player may open without a pair of jacks or better. Red Dog at 401, the house game, with the betting against the pool and the forfeit for refusing to bet. Sir Garnet, Solitaire Cribbage, Nap.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd stamped across the fore-edge in black, so it reads when the book is closed: WHITE PINE COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL, ELY, NEVADA. The same stamp repeats inside, on the preface page, on the backgammon diagram, on the poker page. At the rear, pasted to the board, a Date Due slip with one name written across the top line in ink: Daphne Reed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the front endpaper, in pencil, a short note in an older hand: initials, then a date that reads 10-7-48, ruled off above a figure of 1.00, also ruled off. A dollar, in October 1948.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eHistory \u0026amp; Provenance\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStart with where it lived. Ely sits in eastern Nevada, county seat of White Pine, a copper town built on the 1906 strike and the Nevada Northern Railway. Nevada legalized wide-open gambling in March 1931, on a bill carried by Assemblyman Phil Tobin of Humboldt County and signed by Governor Fred Balzar. Nine years later a public high school library in a Nevada mining town was holding a volume that explains how to open a jack pot and how to run a Red Dog pool, and stamping its name across the edge so everyone could see whose book it was.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat is the object. Not a scandal, and not an accident either. Hoyle's Games was the standard household reference in every state, and a school library would stock it for bridge, cribbage and backgammon without a second thought. But this particular copy sat in this particular state, and the poker chapter is in it, and the stamp is on it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEdmond Hoyle himself was born in England in 1672 and died in London on 29 August 1769 at ninety seven. By 1741 he was tutoring London society in whist and selling copies of his manuscript notes. He worked those up into A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist in 1742, priced at a guinea. It sold out, he sold the rights for a hundred guineas, and pirates immediately began printing it under false names. The publisher's answer was to pay Hoyle to sign each legitimate copy by hand. That is where the signature on this cover comes from, two centuries later and reproduced by machine: the original anti-counterfeiting measure turned into a trademark. According to Hoyle has meant strictly by the rules ever since. He was elected to the Poker Hall of Fame in 1979, roughly sixty years after his death and well before poker existed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe R. F. Foster in the copyright line is Robert Frederick Foster, born in Edinburgh on 31 May 1853 and dead at Eastham, Massachusetts on Christmas Day 1945. He wrote more than fifty books on games, was card editor of the New York Sun from 1895 and later the Tribune, and published Foster's Complete Hoyle in 1897. He claimed the Eleven Rule, the one printed at page 96 of this book, for himself in the winter of 1880 and 1881. In 1935 he was called the dean of living bridge authorities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eProduct Details\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eTitle\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eHoyle's Complete and Authoritative Book of Games, Autograph Edition\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ePublisher\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eBlue Ribbon Books, Garden City and 14 West 49th Street, New York\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eDate\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e1940, as printed on the copyright page, over earlier copyrights running back to 1907\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eContents\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eFour hundred odd pages covering backgammon, whist, contract bridge with the Forcing-Approach system, draw poker and jack pots, Red Dog, cribbage, Nap and much else, with diagrams and worked hands\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eBinding\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ePublisher's tan suede-finish cloth, front stamped in black with a facsimile of Edmond Hoyle's signature\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eProvenance\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eStamped WHITE PINE COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL, ELY, NEVADA across the fore-edge and repeatedly within. Date Due slip at the rear inscribed Daphne Reed. Pencil note on the front endpaper reading as initials, a date of 10-7-48, and 1.00\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eDimensions\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eTo be confirmed\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eCondition\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ePoor to fair. The spine covering is gone entirely, leaving the backing strip, the cords and the exposed mull visible along the whole length. The front board is loose and attached at the joint only. Boards rubbed, soiled and spotted, corners worn through, edges frayed. Text block cracked at several points and shaken but holding, pages toned throughout with light chipping at the corners, the first few leaves torn with loss at the fore-edge. All text legible. No dust jacket. Not restored\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/tbody\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhy It Belongs in Your Home\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you sell in Nevada, this is the one in the batch that tells itself. A gambling rulebook with a state high school's name burned across the edge of the paper, printed nine years into legal gaming, with the jack pot rules and the Red Dog pool rules intact and a schoolgirl's name on the due slip at the back. You can put that on a shelf in Reno and it will get picked up.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt also carries a genuinely good piece of design. The front board has nothing on it but a dead man's signature, reproduced from the autographs he was paid to write by hand so buyers could tell a real copy from a forgery. That is the entire history of the Hoyle name compressed into one stamped line, and it reads from across a room.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe binding is finished. The spine is gone and the front board is hanging, so this is a display and reference object rather than something to handle often. Open at the poker chapter under glass, lay it in a case with gaming chips, dice or Nevada paper, or shelve it in a study where the fore-edge stamp faces out. Priced for what it is, and what it is is a Nevada document.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Viridian Eclection","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67621716197481,"sku":"VE-1810","price":149.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0651\/0093\/9369\/files\/01_d3f269a0-4b5b-4bef-bc50-3da437c7fa46.jpg?v=1791631956","url":"https:\/\/viridianeclection.com\/products\/hoyles-book-of-games-white-pine-county-high-school-ely-nevada-1940","provider":"Viridian Eclection","version":"1.0","type":"link"}