"Announcing the United States Card Collectors Catalog"- JR Burdick Mar. 1, 1936
 

The most hotly contested item in the recent auction for John Wagner's hobby ephemera was this announcement for "The United States Card Collectors Catalog", or the American Card Catalog as we know it today. This announcement predates the catalog by 3 months. Included is a Burdick letter, written a week before he sent out the announcement. ...Enjoy....

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Awesome, LL!!

Those are very nice and interesting letters Leon. I esp. like the part where the three T210's Beatty, Cabrol, and Stoehr were recently confirmed. Those are the kind of discoveries that made the known checklists we work off of today. So cool thanks for sharing.

Very cool

They seriously freaking talked like that?

Indiana Jones would say "It belongs in a museum!" Leon, thanks for posting this in the Net54 museum for all of us to enjoy.

My favorite passage:

Very cool! Thanks for sharing it with us. I liked the part where he talks about paste on the card backs that should soak off easily - Burdick approved of card soaking!

The prices for printing and at retail are amusing; what a smaller scale everything was on back then. Depression pricing all around I guess. Great read Leon.

The letter suggests that the T206 Reagan was considered a rare card. Nobody feels that way today, I don't think.

The I80 Kinney set he is referring to is now know as the N224 Kinney Military set. He knew of 603 with 15 to 20 possible......good guess since it's now known to be 622 cards. I have been collecting it actively for 12 years and have been stuck at 612 cards for the last 5-6 years with only 1 of the 10 I am missing coming up for sale in that time. No wonder nobody has ever completed it, although the British museum is short just one and a member of this Board (he who has the near-set of T215 Pirate cards) is short just 3 of them.

T218 variation?
 

In the third graph of the Wagner letter he makes reference to a variation for W. J. Kramer's card in the T218 Champion Athletes and Prizefighters set (which he refers to as #572).

I've been collecting T218s for over a decade and have never heard of the red shirt/#100 variation for Kramer. Has anyone else who collects T218s ever seen an example? I'm guessing he never confirmed it.

Probably talking about the T227 card of Kramer

An absolute hobby treasure! Congrats Leon on accumulating some of the most important pieces of early hobby history. Interesting parallels to today, so much, yet so little, has changed.

best yet!
 

in fact - better than that!

Thanks Henry et al........and to further elaborate, if I am not mistaking? in the first paragraph of the letter, it looks like Wagner sent the #521 dupe of Honus (Pontifical Standard) to Burdick for free. If we remember that article David just posted it mentions it. And it mentions how, after returning the $25 three times Burdick finally took the money.

Note also the discovery of the T206 Plank

Thanks for posting Leon! I got a kick out of the letter using the phrase "here's the dope on...."

Since Mr. Burdick took a loss on the above mentioned Card Collectors Bulletin project eleven of his friends took up a collection......Dec 1940......

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Interesting
 

Interesting reading. I can't imagine the amount of work that went into this catalog.

One thing is curious. On the first letter he used the number 1. On the other letters he substituted the letter I for the 1. I wonder if his typewriter was broken?

He was industrious so I wouldn't put it past him to improvise a 1 with a capital I. Many of his letters posted are written on backs of Card Collectors Bulletins pages.

Well.... It sounds like Burdick soaked cards ( the flour and water easily dissolving reference). If it's ok by Jefferson.....

6 years bump so others can see some roots of where card collecting came from. The history of the hobby is interesting...
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Whenever I read Mr. Burdick's correspondence , let alone the ACC, I try to remember this was a labor of love, since he suffered so badly from an arthritic spine and was in terrible pain most of his adult life.

Interesting after trading for the T210 Cabrol card last year from the Net54 BST, and now finding out today, that it's mentioned in the JR Burdick correspondence as a discovery at that time to be added to set