UK designer creates world’s largest playing card 1,000 times bigger than a regular one
Custom playing cards maker Rob Hallifax (UK) has played his cards right to claim his second Guinness World Records title, this time for the largest playing card.
Earlier in this year, Rob created the smallest pack of playing cards at a miniscule 5.0 mm x 3.6 mm, using 3D printing technology. He then set about his next record challenge.
The record to beat was 2.87 meters (9 ft 4.99 in) in height, achieved by India's Ramkumar Sarangapani back in 2020. The record guidelines require the playing card to be an outsized, to-scale replica of an existing, commercially available playing card.
Now Rob's huge king of hearts card, recently delivered to the Guinness World Records office in London, has arrived - and it's kind of a big deal.
Measuring 3 m x 2.02 m (9 ft 10 in x 6 ft 7 in), the card is taller than the world's tallest man Sultan Kösen - 251 cm (8 ft 2.82 in) - and close to the average height of a Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur.
The card is effectively a giant photo mosaic depicting thousands of smaller images, which feature hundreds of different photos repeated. The selfies were sent by Rob's backers for his Crowdfunder project. From a distance, it appears to be a traditional European king of hearts playing card design. Move in close and photos of people and even some of their pets appear.
Rob Hallifax with his giant playing card
But which record title proved the toughest challenge - the smallest pack of cards or the largest card?
"Probably this one," says Rob. "If you think about the area of this compared with all the small ones, this was a lot of work putting together all the components of it."
Rob also had to source a specialist printer who could handle the hefty project.
The card arrives at GWR HQ
Has he considered making a full set? "Maybe. It would be quite heavy wouldn't it?"
After being delivered and unwrapped, the card has found a temporary home at Guinness World Records HQ, though the ceiling was only just high enough. A TV crew from BBC London visited to profile Rob as part of the celebrations of Guinness World Records Day 2024.
Q&A with Rob Hallifax
When did you first become interested in playing cards and creating custom made cards – why do you think that was?
In general I've been interested in playing cards my whole life. I've always been fascinated by each card being a small piece of art. When I was about 11 or 12 I remember drawing a giant king of hearts to put up on my wall. (It seemed giant at the time anyway - it was probably only A3!) About eight or nine years ago I met someone at a crowdfunding event that I used to run who had created a deck of cards on Kickstarter. That ignited the idea that one day I'd like to make my own deck. Then during lockdown, I had the idea for my first deck - cocktail recipe playing cards.
The smallest pack of playing cards
What’s your favourite card game?
I do like playing Hearts, a trick-taking card game.
If you could set another record that wasn’t related to playing cards, what would it be?
Hmm, interesting. I've actually been thinking about other playing card records to go for already! But away from playing cards I'd love to try a fastest-assembly-of-LEGO record.
(I've previously written up my thoughts on this subject actually.)
What was the biggest challenge in manufacturing the card and complying with the record guidelines?
This is an obvious answer, but it was just finding a printer that big! The card needed to be printed in one piece and at a high resolution. That's a tricky combination. I needed to find an "ultra large format" printer as even "large format" printers couldn't go big enough. And even once it was made, moving it about is rather tricky, as you found out!
How many times is the card bigger than a regular sized card?
The card is 1,162 times bigger than a regular card and 360,795 times bigger than the world's smallest playing cards.
The mosaic that makes up the image of the king contains 3,432 images.