Well, as other answers have noted, the wave function of quantum mechanics is not a probability wave as its values are complex and it is only the squared amplitude that gives a probability density. But the process of “collapse” involved in a quantum measurement does involve something like your playing card analogy.
There are actually two stages in the measurement and observation process. One is the interaction with an incompletely known measurement apparatus which reduces or eliminates the prospects for future interference and basically turns the previously pure state of the isolated system (considered as a subsystem of the larger world) into a statistical mixture. And the second is the collapse of that statistical mixture by observation – with the result that, from the observer’s point of view, of the many possible alternatives only one is actually true.
And if this makes it seem to you that the “state” of the system actually depends on the observer then you are on the right track. (But it is nothing special about the “consciousness” of the observer that is relevant here. Almost any localized system could play the same role relative to the rest of the universe.)
Any configuration history of any physical system can be considered as “seeing” the rest of the universe in a “relative state” which “collapses” when the configuration history in question passes a point beyond which the configuration includes information about that particular measurement value.