Card Briefs: Discover to Replace 2 Celebrity-Art Cards

Dean Witter, Discover & Co. will retire two of its three Private Issue cards June 13, when new cards will be available.

Cards designed by former Beatle Ringo Starr and Olympic sprint champion Florence Griffith Joyner will be replaced by examples from other, as yet unidentified, celebrity artists.

The Private Issue card designed by actress Jane Seymour will continue to be issued for a year. A spokeswoman for the company declined to say whether Ms. Seymour's design, a floral print, was more popular than the modernist designs of the other two.

Dean Witter plans to issue new designs annually and is marketing the cards as collector's items. The cards' pricing will not change.

"Each of the three art cards has proven to be enormously popular, and new card-member acquisition has exceeded our goals," said William L. Hodges, executive vice president of Dean Witter's Novus Services payments unit.

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