Tigers #101

In 1881 Russell, Morgan & Company commenced playing card production by issuing six grades of cards with new, purely American names which departed from the traditional English names (such as Harry's, Merry Andrews, etc.) which had been used until then:

• 101 Tigers
• 202 Sportsman's
• 303 Army and Navy
• 404 Congress
• 505 Army and Navy, gold edges
• 606 Congress, Gold edges

Tigers #101 was their first brand. It was the least expensive. Initially it was issued with a generic Russell & Morgan Ace of Spades without a brand name (see illustration right) but later issues had a “Tigers No.101” branded Ace of Spades. In 1885 the Russell & Morgan Printing Company was formed to succeed Russell, Morgan & Co and in 1891 the company name was changed to The United States Printing Co. In 1894 The United States Playing Card Company was incorporated to hold all the playing card manufacturing operations. Tigers #101 were produced until about 1930 and five different Aces and three different Jokers are known. Some of the later editions only mention U.S. Playing Card Co. on the Ace.

Above: Tigers #101 playing cards published by Russell & Morgan Co. c.1885. The court cards are full-length, but the numeral cards are double-ended. Images by kind permission of Mike Jacobs.

From the beginning the company used the most modern equipment. A card-punching machine enabled cards to be punched quickly and accurately from the printed sheets, which gave greater precision than the manual method of cutting and trimming cards used prior to that time.

References:

Dawson, Tom & Judy: The Hochman Encyclopedia of American Playing Cards, U.S. Games Systems Inc., 2000

Hargrave, Catherine Perry: A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Cards and Gaming, Dover Publications, New York, 1966