A photo of a young Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul on the queen of hearts card from a playing card set released by the NME in 1991.
I’m going to break the bad news to you quickly when it comes to obtaining your own set of NME’s l playing card set from 1991: Coming across a complete 52-card set is pretty much a mission impossible. Single cards occasionally pop up on auction sites and can sell for five bucks or more when they do. As somewhat of a collector of this type of ephemera, I can completely understand coveting a set of these rare cards as they include an array of arresting black and white photographs featuring the music world’s most elite talents.
Whoever did this for the NME really must have had fun. I mean, Morrissey is the queen of diamonds, Mark E. Smith is the joker, and James Brown is the king of hearts. NME even added an extra number six to all of the number six cards so the tops of the cards read 666. Before I completely nerd out more than usual, let’s take a look at the best of NME’s playing card set below. You can see all of the cards here.
Kim Gordon + 666 = YES.
More after the jump…