Waddingtons Zodiac Playing Cards

James Bond (Sean Connery) plays the patience, or solitaire, card game with a deck of red Waddingtons Thomas De La Rue zodiac playing cards in the first James Bond movie Dr. No (1962).

Bond picks up the vintage 1960's playing cards in Miss Taro (Zena Marshall's bedroom and starts playing a game by himself while waiting for Professor Dent (Anthony Dawson). This is the iconic scene where Bond says "That's a Smith & Wesson and you've had your six." and kills Dent.

The red playing cards can clearly be seen on the little table next to Bond. The back of the cards have a red checkered design. The images on the blocks represent the Zodiac signs. The star signs are red on white and gold on red.

The same deck was also available in the color blue.

The Zodiac playing cards were created by Waddington's for Thomas De La Rue. Some decks have the "De La Rue" name on the Ace cards, but most cards have "Waddingtons" on the Ace card.

These vintage cards are sometimes offered on eBay and you can also find some replica cards there.

About De La Rue plc and Waddingtons
De La Rue plc is a British printing company founded in 1821 by Thomas De La Rue. The company is currently best known for being a stamp and banknote printer, which it still does to this day. Customers include governments, central banks and leading brands. But in the 1800s the company was a big player in the playing card industry.

Starting in 1831, the company started printing playing cards. In 1940 the old De La Rue printing works at Bunhill Row in London was destroyed by air raids. From 1941 onwards the printing of De La Rue’s playing cards was undertaken by Waddingtons in Leeds. In 1969 De La Rue completely sold its playing card business to Waddingtons, a company which was bought by Hasbro in 1994.

The Waddingtons brand is still used today, even for a deck of James Bond 007 cards, available for only $6.75 on Amazon, or read more here.