I get that it's really no more expensive to throw a Chicago pic on the back of an existing order of playing cards...but it's still weird to see a deck of 'Chicago' cards since to my knowledge it's never been a Delta hub. I've flown on over a dozen airlines through O'Hare, but never Delta. It's just not terribly convenient for us.
Great observation! It is odd. I've been trying to narrow down an actual date of when this deck is from. All of the listings for them say it's from the 70s and I don't doubt it but the research has been fun. They made these for a whole bunch of places. On my post in r/playingcards about this deck I've been updating a comment with my findings as I go along in hopes that someone else might stumble upon it while doing the same research. I won't be satisfied until I can narrow it down more confidently though.
Anyway, here's my update from this morning:
all of the aces have the same jet on them. It appears to be a L-1011 TriStar. It appears it went into service in 1972. Delta first flew them in December of 1973 and retired them in 2001. According to that same source Delta planned on adding service to Chicago in early 1974. That said, I'm assuming 'adding service' means adding more service to an area they already fly to since this talks about a runway collision involving a Delta plane in ‘72. However, this deck is an advertisement. Reasonably we can assume it was used in the push to increase their presence in Chicago.
To me this establishes that this deck was no older than from 1974 and no newer than 2001 (when they retired the jet). However, the font screams 70s and they seemed to want to advertise increased service to Chicago so I'd still pin it as sometime between 1974-1980.
The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, commonly referred to as the L-1011 (pronounced "El-ten-eleven") or TriStar, is an American medium-to-long-range, wide-body trijet airliner built by the Lockheed Corporation. It was the third wide-body airliner to enter commercial operations, after the Boeing 747 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. The airliner has a seating capacity of up to 400 passengers and a range of over 4,000 nautical miles (7,410 km). Its trijet configuration has three Rolls-Royce RB211 engines with one engine under each wing, along with a third engine center-mounted with an S-duct air inlet embedded in the tail and the upper fuselage.
I discovered that these card backs (as well as the alternate style that I'm going to research next) are based on actual artwork. Jack Laycox painted this particular Chicago scene in 1974. So I've confirmed that for sure they aren't older than that. Other cities were painted in 1976 and I did see that the actual advertising posters were dated 1976 as well. He probably finished the whole project in '76 and then the campaign went underway.
There's also this post from the Delta Flight Museum that says the posters were used from '75-'86
imgur.com
I get that it's really no more expensive to throw a Chicago pic on the back of an existing order of playing cards...but it's still weird to see a deck of 'Chicago' cards since to my knowledge it's never been a Delta hub. I've flown on over a dozen airlines through O'Hare, but never Delta. It's just not terribly convenient for us.
Great observation! It is odd. I've been trying to narrow down an actual date of when this deck is from. All of the listings for them say it's from the 70s and I don't doubt it but the research has been fun. They made these for a whole bunch of places. On my post in r/playingcards about this deck I've been updating a comment with my findings as I go along in hopes that someone else might stumble upon it while doing the same research. I won't be satisfied until I can narrow it down more confidently though.
Anyway, here's my update from this morning:
all of the aces have the same jet on them. It appears to be a L-1011 TriStar. It appears it went into service in 1972. Delta first flew them in December of 1973 and retired them in 2001. According to that same source Delta planned on adding service to Chicago in early 1974. That said, I'm assuming 'adding service' means adding more service to an area they already fly to since this talks about a runway collision involving a Delta plane in ‘72. However, this deck is an advertisement. Reasonably we can assume it was used in the push to increase their presence in Chicago.
To me this establishes that this deck was no older than from 1974 and no newer than 2001 (when they retired the jet). However, the font screams 70s and they seemed to want to advertise increased service to Chicago so I'd still pin it as sometime between 1974-1980.
Lockheed L-1011 TriStar
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Desktop version of u/CosmoVerde's link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_L-1011_TriStar
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Update:
I discovered that these card backs (as well as the alternate style that I'm going to research next) are based on actual artwork. Jack Laycox painted this particular Chicago scene in 1974. So I've confirmed that for sure they aren't older than that. Other cities were painted in 1976 and I did see that the actual advertising posters were dated 1976 as well. He probably finished the whole project in '76 and then the campaign went underway.
There's also this post from the Delta Flight Museum that says the posters were used from '75-'86