Antique Baccarat Dealing Shoe from Casino Monte Carlo

In recent years I've acquired several dealing shoes for the purpose of studying their design features and measurements. I am most interested in contemporary casino shoes, since those are the type of shoes I make. However, while collecting these objects I often found it impossible to resist buying some antique dealing shoes I've come across. There is an unwritten rule that if you own at least three of one type of object you are officially a collector. I try to resist developing a passion for collecting, for a number of reasons, but at this point it would be really difficult for me to deny that I own a collection of antique dealing shoes. Perhaps one day a real collector will have an interest in acquiring my entire collection, but until then I can take pictures of my shoes and post them on my blog.

To the best of my knowledge this is the oldest dealing shoe that I own. It is over a hundred years old and was brought to the US around 1932 by the grandfather of the person that sold this shoe to the antique dealer that sold it to me. But before this shoe crossed the Atlantic it was used at the famous casino in Monte Carlo. At least that's the story that came with the shoe. I have no way of knowing how accurate the story is, but since the shoe was sold to me for a mere $40 I would have a hard time seeing a point why anyone would bother making up an elaborate story just to jack up the price a few bucks. If there are any inaccuracies in the provenance of this shoe they are probably just honest mistakes.


The first thing I did when I purchased this shoe was to remove the metal ramp, to see if any clues were hiding on the inside. I didn't find the maker's name, or anything that would indicate a date, anywhere, but I did find a spot where a label had once been affixed. The glue is still there and parts of the torn-off label are still stuck to the dry glue. Why someone tore the label off is anyone's guess.


Some of the letters are still partially visible, but unfortunately not enough of them remain to allow me to reconstruct what had once been printed on the label. The only detail that I think I figured out was the first word in the last row. There is a capital letter R visible that is followed by that appears to be the remains of a capital "U" (missing the bottom and most of its right side, and possibly confused by a capital I). After the U there is a horizontal line that looks like it might be what remains of a capital E. So, the word might be RUE, which is French for street. Whatever might have been written in front of the R has been torn off, but if that word is in fact RUE there would have been a number in front of it, followed by a space.

It would make a lot of sense for that word in the particular spot to have read RUE, because that's where RUE would have been written if the last line on the label was an address in France. And that's one of the main things I was interested to know. If the shoe was made in France it would support the story that it came from Monte Carlo.

Although I will probably never be able to trace this shoe back to its original source, there are still a few things that I can tell for certain about this shoe.

The wood is definitely about 100 years old. I have been collecting vintage guitars for many years and by now I've developed a very good sense of what old lacquered wood looks like. The patina is real and the crackles in the lacquer are genuine, and only a century passing by could have left that particular time stamp on this object.

Another detail that I can tell for sure is the interior width of the shoe. This says a lot, because playing cards did not have standardized measurements one hundred years ago. If you load a standard poker size deck inside this shoe there is too much space on the sides. That's because this shoe was made for slightly longer cards. The pack of cards that I used in this photo was a 19th century pack made by De La Rue & Co, of London. To be honest, this was a bit surprising because in France, during the 19th century, mostly French playing cards were used; and there was no shortage of makers of playing cards in France. 19th century French playing cards are smaller than the packs we use nowadays, so this shoe was definitely not made for them. Could this detail support the story, that the shoe was used in Monaco, and not in France?

The last detail that's worth noting is the absence of a plate that used to be attached to the right side of the shoe. All that remains are four small holes where the screws once were holding a plate attached to the shell. The missing plate is of course the plate with inscribed drawing rules. This means that the shoe was made for the game of baccarat. But baccarat is not just one game, it is actually a family of games, much like poker is. There are three baccarat variations (in French), baccara en banque, baccara chemin de fer, and baccara punto banco (which is the baccarat variation mostly played today and is now called simply baccarat).

We know that chemin de fer is played with a six-deck shoe. My shoe is a two deck shoe, which seems to eliminate the possibility that it was made for chemin de fer. I do not know if there might once have been an early variation of chemin de fer that used a two deck shoe. If there was I've never heard of it.

The game punto banco, or what we now call baccarat, is also played with six decks. Plus, that was not the most popular baccarat variation in Europe, a hundred years ago. What remains is to consider the possibility that the shoe was made for the game baccara en banque.

Baccara en banque is probably completely extinct today. However, detective Eugène Villiod describes the game in his famous book The Stealing Machine. In his book he says that the game was played with two decks and dealt from the marble block, instead of a shoe.

We must remember that dealing shoes were in their infancy at that time and that games were also still being developed. Plus, Eugène Villiod talks strictly about gambling establishments in Paris, so things were probably not the same in Monte Carlo. Is it possible that baccara en banque was dealt from a two deck shoe in the early years of the casino in Monte Carlo? I guess it's possible. I actually tried to find out, by contacting the casino, but my research produced no results. That casino is now managed by much younger people that don't necessarily care about what went on a hundred years ago.

Although I was unable to check the provenance of this shoe, nothing I found can completely discard the possibility that the shoe was once used in Monte Carlo. I will keep checking, whenever opportunities present themselves. But in the meantime the shoe sits on my shelf and continues to age.