For over a century until 1996, F.X. Schmid was an important German manufacturer of

playing cards A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a Pap ...

(traditional

card game A card game is any game that uses playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, whether the cards are of a traditional design or specifically created for the game (proprietary). Countless card games exist, including famil ...

s and

quartets In music, a quartet (, , , , ) is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers. Classical String quartet In classical music, one of the most common combinations of four instruments in chamber music is the string quartet. String quar ...

board game A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects () that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the ...

s and

puzzle A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together ( or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to find the solution of the puzzle. There are differe ...

s. It was considered one of the major European manufacturers. In 1995, its turnover was 67 million DM and there were around 250 employees. The publishing house has been a wholly owned subsidiary of

Ravensburger Ravensburger AG is a German game, puzzle and toy company, publishing house, and market leader in the jigsaw puzzle market. History The company was founded by Otto Robert Maier in Ravensburg, a town in Upper Swabia in southern Germany. He began ...

since 1996. The name F.X. Schmid is used today in the field of children's books and playing cards by Ravensburger.

History

German entrepreneur, Franz Xaver Schmid, founded the publishing house in Munich in 1860, which produced toys and cards. The company was then run as the United Munich Playing Card Factories (''Vereinigte Münchener Spielkarten-Fabriken'') in 1915. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

the company relocated its headquarters to

Prien am Chiemsee Prien am Chiemsee (official: , High German [], Bavarian (local) dialect []) is a municipality in the Upper Bavarian Rosenheim (district), district of Rosenheim in Germany. The town is a certified Luftkurort, air and Sebastian Kneipp, Kneipp sp ...

. The manufacture and production of board games and puzzles started there in 1955. In 1977 the site was expanded and there was a branch in the United States. In 1991, the playing card programme of F.X. Schmid was integrated into the production of the

ASS Altenburger ASS Altenburger is since 2003 the trademark of the German playing card manufacturer Spielkartenfabrik Altenburg, based in the town of Altenburg. The firm is owned by Cartamundi, of Turnhout, Belgium. ASS (''Altenburger und Stralsunder Spielkarten ...

in Thuringia. ASS Altenburger was thus involved in its market expansion. In 1996, the company ran into economic difficulties and in 1997 merged with Ravensburger. There, initially under the name ''FX'', an attempt was made to establish its own image as "games for young adults". In 2000, the game series was discontinued in the wake of the decline in sales on the game market. Since about 2002, the F.X. Schmid brand has been used by Ravensburger for children's books. at buchpreis24.de Playing cards for popular games such as Skat and

Schafkopf Schafkopf (, lit. 'sheep's head'), also called Bavarian Schafkopf, is a popular German Trick-taking game, trick-taking card game of the ace–ten family for four players that evolved, towards the end of the 19th century, from German Schafkopf. ...

are still produced under the brand name of F.X. Schmid and is the last manufacturer of German Tarock playing cards. The cards are of the

Tarot Nouveau The Bourgeois Tarot deck is a mid-19th century pattern of tarot cards of German origin that is used for playing card games in western Europe and Canada. It is not designed for divinatory purposes.Baden Baden (; ) is a historical territory in southern Germany. In earlier times it was considered to be on both sides of the Upper Rhine, but since the Napoleonic Wars, it has been considered only East of the Rhine. History The margraves of Ba ...

game of

Cego Cego is a Tarot card game for three or four players played mainly in and around the Black Forest region of Germany. It was probably derived from the three-player Badenese game of Dreierles when soldiers deployed from the Iberian Peninsula durin ...

Successful games (selection)

F.X. Schmid achieved success with numerous games on the German-speaking and international games market, including: * ''

Auf Achse Auf Achse (, "on the road", "on the axle") is a logistics-themed board game designed by Wolfgang Kramer and published in 1987 by FX Schmid. The game won the Spiel des Jahres award. In 1992, a junior edition was released; and in 1994 a rummy-li ...

'' (

Spiel des Jahres The Spiel des Jahres (, 'Game of the Year') is an award for board and card games, created in 1978 with the purpose of rewarding family-friendly game design, and promoting excellent games in the German market. It is thought that the existence an ...

1987) * ''

Hoity Toity ''Hoity Toity'' (, , ) is a board game created by Klaus Teuber in 1990. Publication history German game designer Klaus Teuber created ''Adel Verpflichtet'' in 1990, and it was published in Germany by F.X. Schmid. It was also distributed in th ...

'' (Spiel des Jahres 1990) * ''Bluff'' (Spiel des Jahres 1993) * ''

Torres Torres may refer to: People *Torres (surname), a Spanish and Portuguese surname * Torres (musician), singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott ** ''Torres'' (album), 2013 self-titled album by Torres Places Americas * Torres, Colorado, an unincorporated ...

'' (Spiel des Jahres 2000, Label ''FX'') In addition it has published the games of ''

Set! Scheme is a dialect of the Lisp family of programming languages. Scheme was created during the 1970s at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) and released by its developers, Guy L. Steele and Gerald Jay Sus ...

'', ''Schraumeln'', ''

Phase 10 Phase 10 is a card game created in 1982 by Kenneth Johnson and sold by Mattel, which purchased the rights from Fundex Games in 2010. Phase 10 is based on a variant of rummy known as contract rummy. It consists of a special deck equivalent to ...

'', '' Quarto!'', ''Kuhhandel'', ''Ein solches Ding'' and many others.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:FX Schmid Playing card manufacturers Board game publishing companies Publishing companies of Germany Manufacturing companies based in Munich 1860 establishments in the German Confederation