Congress was the most expensive of the first four brands introduced by the company in 1881, when it was still known as Russell, Morgan, and Co. Congress was printed under two stocks: their standard No. 404 and the deluxe No. 606 which had gold edges.[23]

In modern use, the Congress brand is used for contract bridge and canasta cards and accessories. Congress cards are available in a wide assortment of pictorial back designs, and are typically housed in a velour covered box with a pull-out tray. Each Congress deck consists of the 52 standard cards, two jokers (which feature an image of the United States Capitol), and an information card describing bridge scoring. Although single decks are available, Congress cards are more frequently sold in coordinated sets of two decks to facilitate the common bridge practice of alternating decks between hands. Early Congress cards came in three variations: Poker size (1881–1922), Whist size (early 1900s to 1922), and bridge size 1922-on). From 1881 to around 1900, decks featured Lord Dundreary as the joker and the backs were solid color borders with gold (and sometimes copper) colored ink, called “lacquer backs”. In 1899, pictorial backs became the norm. Between 1897 and 1904, the jokers were a black and white image of the back design

Samba card game, variant of canasta, in which three 52-card decks plus 6 jokers are used. Unlike canasta, in which only cards of the same rank may be melded (grouped face up on the playing surface and scored), Samba also allows sequences of three or more cards in the same suit to be melded.

Thank you for your interest in my listing.