What are tarot card dimensions? Find the standard sizes here.

So I got curious about tarot card sizes last week when my friend tried shuffling my deck and dropped half of them. Turns out her hands couldn’t handle these chunky cards I bought off some random artist online. Got me thinking – are there actually standard sizes for these things?

My Measurement Disaster

First thing I did was grab every deck in my house – found eight total. Dug out my old school ruler with half the numbers rubbed off. Measured each deck like four times because I kept messing up between inches and centimeters.

Started writing numbers on sticky notes:

Biggest one was 3.5″ x 5″ – some artisanal deck from a flea market
Tiny travel deck was barely 1.75″ x 3″
Three other decks hovered around 2.75″ x 4.75″

Looked like chaos honestly. Thought maybe tarot cards were like shoelaces – no actual rules.

The Google Rabbit Hole

Typed “standard tarot card size” into search – got a million conflicting answers. People in forums argued like it was politics. Some swore by poker-sized cards, others said only massive ones felt “authentic”.

Finally found this obscure printing company FAQ that listed:

Traditional size: 70mm x 120mm (2.75″ x 4.72″)
Poker size: 63mm x 88mm (2.48″ x 3.46″)
Jumbo size: 89mm x 146mm (3.5″ x 5.75″)

Made sense – my “regular” decks all matched that traditional size near enough.

Reality Check Failure

Tried buying boxes to organize my decks using those measurements. Complete disaster. The 70x120mm cards wouldn’t fit neatly in any standard storage I found online. Turns out most sellers add 1-2mm extra for comfort and nobody mentions it.

Ended up hand-making tuck boxes at 72mm x 122mm after wasting $15 on wrong-sized containers. Lesson learned: always add wiggle room!