Game of Pit with box and instructions. The deck of 65 cards includes eight sets of stocks, each consisting of eight identical cards, plus one Panic card. Pit is a stock-trading card game very similar to Gavitt's Stock Exchange, a game developed by Harry Gavitt of Topeka and first published by the Gavitt Printing and Publishing Company in 1903. Newspapers advertisements for Pit begin appearing about the same time as Gavitt began heavily promoting his game, although the legal relationship between those early versions of Pit and Gavitt's game are unclear. This particular version of Pit was published in 1903 by the Pit Publishing Company of Topeka, which was chartered on July 8 of that year specifically to produce the game. By 1904, Gavitt had sold a partial interest in his game to Parker Brothers, allowing them to refine and publish Pit while he retained the rights to Gavitt Stock Exchange.