Costly Colours
Costly Colours, sometimes just called Costly, is an historical English card game for two players and a "fascinating relative of Cribbage". The game "requires a moderate amount of skill in playing, and is well adapted to teach quickness in counting". It has more combinations than Cribbage and retains the original scoring system for points, but does not use a 'crib'. In the 19th century it was described as "peculiar to Shropshire." History Like its close relative Cribbage, Costly Colours is probably a descendant of Noddy, an English game that dates to at least 1589. The rules of Costly Colours are first described by Charles Cotton in the first edition of his compendium, The Compleat Gamester, in 1674; and reprinted in subsequent editions up to 1754. In 1816, Singer reprints the rules in his Researches, but by 1850 the game is being described as obsolete. The game has been described as being the "speciality of Shropshire" and there is evidence that it was popular there in the early 19th-century, not least from a booklet published in Shrewsbury in 1805 entitled The Royal Game of Costly Colours which claimed that it was "an improvement on the game of Cribbage". About this time