LM,
I am glad you have traveled the world over and are omniscient of all things to know that with no uncertainty decks of cards are identical everywhere. My post was not about the level of difficulty, but was a comment on what I perceived as the blatant "American-ness" of the question. My undergrad major is in marketing (research) with a minor in sociology; so some of the basics that I have learned were: 1) the way you ask a question affects the answer and 2)it is important to look beyond one's self reference criterion.
Finally, the GMAT is a test that is given worldwide (i believe) in the same format, which is why I was concerned if this was an OFFICIAL question. Considering that the GMAT at its core is really just a big statistical monster (hell, the AWA is really just two looong open ended response questions - they are even "coded" by two different entities like formal research procedures would dictate) to be truly valid you need to ensure 3) construct equivalence to make sure you are measuring the same phenomena correctly. In a marketing setting, at its simplest this means you don't give a survey to someone in India asking them to think in miles when they use kilometers, etc. You'd need conversion of units... which brings me to my point: if this were an official question, they'd need to convert the units and answer based on the country, or tell the respondent there are 52 cards and 4 suits.
I realize this kind of abstract thinking is of little use on the GMAT, but it is valuable in the real world when math tricks and formulae are of little use.
Just to prove my point, I checked out Wikipedia:
The cards of Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, western Romania and southern Tyrol use the same colors (hearts, bells, leaves and acorns) as the cards of Southern and Eastern Germany. They usually have a deck of 32 or 36 cards. The numbering includes VII, VIII, IX, X, Under, Over, King and Ace. Some variations with 36 cards have also the number VI. The VI in bells also has the function like a joker in some games and it's named Welli or Weli.
Switzerland
In the German-speaking part of Switzerland, the prevalent deck consists of 36 playing cards with the following suits: roses, bells, acorns and shields. The ranks of the alternate deck, from low to high, are: 6, 7, 8, 9, banner (10), "under", "over", king and ace. In the French part of the country, the most used deck is the French deck.
Italian playing cards most commonly consist of a deck of 40 cards (4 suits going 1 to 7 plus 3 face cards), and are used for playing Italian regional games such as Scopa or Briscola. 52 (or more rarely 36) card sets are also found in the north. Since these cards first appeared in the late 14th century when each region in Italy was a separately ruled province, there is no official Italian pattern. There are sixteen official regional patterns in use in different parts of the country (about one per province). These sixteen patterns are split amongst four regions: