Sola Busca Tarot

LOVESo vintage!

I love having a copy of the Sola Busca tarot deck which in part at least, inspired Pamela Coleman Smith when she was designing the Rider-Waite (Smith) tarot deck. My issues are not with the cards but with the ancillary items described as Museum quality, but I would not want people buying these kits for posterity without knowing a few things about them.The cards themselves are good quality, the box is poorly constructed for museum quality. The inner lining is slightly too big for the box and consequently, during the packing process was torn. There are traces of glue where there should not be and a scar where the paper must have stuck to the box at some time. The book described as being 128pp and full colour is a bit misleading: there are indeed 128 pages but only 41 of them are in English, the rest are in 5 other languages, and the full colour amounts to one image per language.The text explains the supposed history of the deck, based on educated guesses and some historical records. This is interesting but I'm not sure I agree with some of the statements. This is not a traditional tarot deck as we understand it in the 21st Century and we have to make allowances for that. Many images refer to historical personages which may be involved in carrying out ritualistic actions of God/dess worship, and military duties. They clearly reflect the customs of the 16th century and what they knew of their ancestors' beliefs and customs. There is a brief attempt at reconciling this deck to more modern ones but I found that misleading. If we were to try and find similarities between these cards and the Rider-Waite-Smith, for example, the sequence of the major arcana would have to be reorganised. A case in point is the XX card they match to the Judgement card in a modern tarot but is clearly from the image the card we would call the Tower card XVI. Some cards correspond such as the Chariot, and the Fool, but Justice would be better represented by card V.The reverse of the card is a speckled pink on black/dark brown with an extremely faint infinity sign traced vertically.Altogether I am happy to have it for the research potential it has for me, but it leaves a bit to be desired in terms of quality and accuracy.

I know lots of people who don't like the high gloss finish on these cards but personally I love it.Admittedly this makes them almost impossible to shuffle but the gloss finish makes the colours glow. These are big cards! A great set but definitely not museum quality, the corners of the cards are not always cut correctly which annoys me as they sometimes cut into the thin black border.But it's nice to have these replica cards in my collection and I will definitely be using them.

Couldn't be happier with the deck. Beautiful, vibrant colours compared to the previous edition which was more subtle, almost pencil colouring. Large cards, thick card stock, with glossy cover so they seem quite robust. Far too large to shuffle though but I can't really see this being a deck that would be used. It's more for looking at and marvelling at the beauty.The book is what I was most interested in, and it didn't disappoint. The thing with the Sola Busca deck is working out the symbolism, most of which is pretty obscure. So it is also a bit of a game or a quiz to go through the cards and work out who's who. The book is indispensable for this.A beautiful box with a hinged lid adds to the general lushness of the product.All in all, a beautiful addition to any collection.

The artwork is spoilt for me by the production, they are unusable which is very disappointing. The card stock is far too thick and not appropriate for the purpose. The finish is a really high gloss - they are ridiculously shiny and it’s a huge distraction from the imagery. This deck should be absolutely beautiful but it looks and feels cheap, it is massively let down by the materials used.

Great little reproduction of fascinating imagery