First playing cards: Money-suit cards

Case : 016.
The scholarly consensus is that playing cards were invented in Imperial China. They first appeared as early as 9th century Tang China. W. H. Wilkinson suggests that the first cards may have been actual paper currency which were both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for, as in trading card games. As using paper money was inconvenient and risky, they were substituted by play money known as money-suited cards. Some cards, most commonly the highest and lowest of each suit, will have a red stamp mimicking banknote seals. They are considered to be the ancestors of most of the world's playing cards. One of the earliest games of we know is Khanhoo (ηœ‹θ™Ž, watched tiger), a trick-taking game with  30 cards, which dates to the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). During the Qing dynasty, draw-and-discard games became more popular and the 30-card deck was often multiplied with each card having two (double) to five (pentuble).

Case 016: Variations of Khanhoo cards. 


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