Spirit II Black Bicycle Playing Cards

The deck is interesting and catches the eye but it looks like a knock-off theory11 deck and the all black faces makes it difficult to use for shows

This is one of the finest decks of cards I've ever had the chance to behold, and quite frankly, I'm honored to have it in my collection. The beautiful box is a great start. The card backs feature a very ornate scrollwork design with keys at the center, the "key head" being a spade design. The card fronts have a standard white background, but are completely custom thru the deck, including the fonts, pips and the arrangement of the pips on the spot cards. The index pips are nicely done, as the pip on each card is actually designed to be the head of a key. The court cards, while still symmetrical, feature more of a two dimensional "straight on" view as opposed to the standard profile view, and the background and border of the court cards features a sort of stained glass window design. All of the aces have a little bit of scrollwork, but the ace of spades is embellished over the top with an amazing design featuring two crossed keys at the center. The two full sized jokers are just as amazing, also featuring crossed keys, with one joker featuring a "mask of comedy" (of sorts), the other featuring a "mask of tragedy". With all due respect to an incredible ace of spades, the jokers, in my opinion, are reason alone to buy this deck. Here's some free advice to future artists and designers of playing cards: Crossed keys are ALWAYS a great design element!

Three different versions of the Spirit II deck were produced, and this is a borderless Black edition accented with gold, and is my personal favourite.

The Aces look particularly stunning on this black background, and the card-back artwork has a whole different effect with this colour scheme! I really love the look of the court cards in this edition, which have an iconic feel, and appear to have come straight from a medieval church! The colour combinations probably make this deck my personal favourite of the three!

Just like the other editions, the tuck box has interior printing, and is embossed with foil, in this case gold like the Green-Gold edition - but the interior printing looks more vivid and beautiful against the black background of this tuck box.

There are lots of things that stand out about this project, starting with the outstanding tuck-boxes, which look absolutely luxurious and classy, particularly with the generous amount of embossed gold foil. I also love the artwork on the court cards. Magicians will appreciate the addition of two bonus cards that are gaffs, one being a double backer, the other being a split-card.