These were cheap (£8.39 including postage), because they're not antique. This is all I knew about them when I bought them:
They're in a cellophane wrapper, so they can't have been earlier than the late 1930s; the tear-off strip probably adds some more years to that. However, I thought they looked pretty so I went for it.
Naturally, I took off the wrapper. I wasn't buying these as an investment, so didn't care about it. I wasn't disappointed by what I found inside:
The 10 of Clubs told me that the cards were manufactured by Coeur, which is a brand used by Altenburger Spielkarten Fabrik, a German company now owned by Carta Mundi of Belgium (as are so many other old manufacturers).
The faces, particularly on the queens, looked as if they'd been modelled on real people, so I was a little concerned that I'd bought a deck based on well-known East German actors or something. That turns out not to be the case, though. It's a Coeur Salon-Karte no. 66, made in 1968, presumably for the UK or US market.
Anyway, although it's more recent than what I typically buy, the cards are both unusual and pretty, and constitute a nice addition to my collection.