# Card dealers and their clear green visors

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/card-dealers-and-their-clear-green-visors/104597>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 19, 2002, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/card-dealers-and-their-clear-green-visors/104597 "2002-04-19T23:20:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![red\_dragon60](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@red\_dragon60](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/red_dragon60)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2002, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/card-dealers-and-their-clear-green-visors/104597/1 "2002-04-19T23:20:41Z")

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What’s up with old-time accountants and card dealers wearing those clear green plastic-brimmed visors? Do they know something about numbers that I don’t?

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**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/card-dealers-and-their-clear-green-visors/104597/2 "2002-04-20T01:17:37Z")

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No, but what they know is that card tables are very brightly lit, and the lighting is often close to the table surface and can be picked up in peripheral vision. That can cause a lot of eyestrain, especially if you sit there all day. A visor can cut down on it a lot.

I would imagine that dealers where transluscent visors so that they can’t palm chips or cards and stick them to the underside of the visor.

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**Author:** ![Turbo\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ce73a5/32.png) [@Turbo\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turbo_Dog)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/card-dealers-and-their-clear-green-visors/104597/3 "2002-04-20T01:42:36Z")

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You know, I always wondered that myself. And to follow up, what was the point of the sleeve garters too?

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**Author:** ![Lure](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@Lure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lure)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/card-dealers-and-their-clear-green-visors/104597/4 "2002-04-20T06:36:21Z")

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Those 30’s shirts were a lot baggier/less form fitting than todays so cuffs had a tendency to drop lower on the arm/hand.Garters when wearing a jacket stabilized the shirt length like garters do for socks.  
When working jacketless they’d just hike the garter to move the sleeve higher so it wouldn’t drag on the work surface leading to premature wear.

Why they just didn’t roll up their sleeves could have been a social no-no in white collar environments.Blue collars rolled up sleeves and were generally looked upon as inferiors in the social whirl of the 30’s and before.tho they rolled them down when putting on their jackets for apre’work cocktail hour.Some of them would “shoot the cuffs” ala Cagney to straighten out the wrinkles underneath

Today they’re Marlboro men.

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**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2002, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/card-dealers-and-their-clear-green-visors/104597/5 "2002-04-22T04:25:41Z")

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But why don’t accountants still wear those green shades? Has the rise of fluorescent lighting really reduced glare by that much? Maybe it’s fashion; I understand that hats were worn much less by men starting in the early 1960s.