How to avoid switch-case in a factory method of child classes

Question

Lets say we have a family of classes (cards, for the sake of it), and we need to instantiate them based on some identifier. A factory method would look like this:

Answer 1

Instead of storing the type in the dictionary, you could store a Func<Card>:

private Dictionary<int, Func<Card>> cardFactories = 
{
    { 13, () => new King() },
    // etc
}

public Card GetCard(int cardNumber) 
{        
    var factory = cardFactories[cardNumber];
    return factory();
}

In the case of cards, I'd probably make them immutable to start with and just populate the dictionary with the cards themselves, but that's a different matter :)