Hobby history: Card collectors' Hall of Fame, 1970-71
 

In 1970, prominent collector Irv Lerner, with the help of Bob Jaspersen (editor of Sport Fan) and Dick Reuss (co-founder of the Detroit convention that same year), published "Who's Who in Card Collecting", which listed names, addresses, and short bios of any collectors who wanted to be included. One feature of this book was a "Card Collectors' Hall of Fame", with elaborate rules for voting in new members each year. Six Hall of Fame members were listed in that first 1970 editon: Jefferson Burdick, Walter Corson, Charles Bray, Preston Orem, E. C. Wharton-Tigar, and Robert J. Payne. In the 1971 second edition of the "Who's Who", Lerner listed three new inductees: Buck Barker, Lionel Carter, and John D. Wagner. That was the last edition of the "Who's Who" to be published, and those were the last additions to the Hall of Fame.

Last year, I posted a longish article that Dick Reuss wrote in 1970 about the Card Collectors' Hall of Fame, and in the comments Leon posted the first few pages of "Who's Who in Card Collecting" (though not the pages about the Hall of Fame). That post is here: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=218788. As I also mentioned in the comments, George Vrechek had written an article in 2011 about collector directories, including Lerner's "Who's Who" and its Hall of Fame, in which he provided brief summary bios of Lerner's nine inductees. That article is here: http://www.oldbaseball.com/refs/Coll...36_to_1971.pdf

Since I wrote that post early last year, several of the nine Hall of Fame members have been the subjects of my and Leon's hobby history posts. I wrote a lengthy post about Preston Orem, here:

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=228930

And a similarly lengthy post about Walter Corson, here:

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=232220

I've also posted many articles by Lionel Carter, including his obituary of Jefferson Burdick (published in Card Collector's Bulletin in 1963, and in revised form in Sport Hobbyist in 1973), and his obituary of Bob Jaspersen and Buck Barker, published first in SCD and then in revised form in the program for the 1983 National:

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=224897
http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=219926

Leon has continued to post the hobby letters of John D. Wagner in this thread:

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=207944

And just yesterday he revived this 2013 thread where he posted letters that E. C. Wharton-Tigar wrote to Buck Barker:

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=166215

Around the same time that Leon started the Wagner letters thread almost two years ago, I posted an article about Wagner that appeared in the 1982 Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide (aka the Beckett annual guide):

http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=207915

Also, in the recent REA auction I won Wagner's copies of the 1939 American Card Catalog and the first 30 issues of Card Collector's Bulletin (1939-1944), outbidding Leon, and from those I've been posting a lot of interesting articles by Burdick, plus some by Bray from when he took over the bimonthly card auctions in CCB.

All this has made me think of the Card Collectors' Hall of Fame, and so I thought I would post the full pages about it from the 1971 "Who's Who in Card Collecting", including the bios of the nine inductees. All of these guys except for Edward Payne (who was a postcard collector) were very influential in the history of the baseball card hobby, and anybody writing about that history should know about them. Plus, the whole idea of such a Hall of Fame now seems like kind of a quaint relic of a bygone time in the hobby, when some people who had collected T206s as kids were still active collectors.

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Thanks again for posting these publications, David. I think Mr. Burdick's memorial and accomplishments, right above, should be required reading (sort of like the ABC's) in order to collect cards (and for us, baseball cards). There will, and can never be another collector like he was. He stands alone at the top, imo.
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This is very cool. Thanks for sharing!

David, enjoyed reading about the hobby greats, thanks for posting

Agree that Burdick is the single most famous collector of all time, especially since his collection will forever be kept at the Metropolitan Museum. Living in NY, I've had the chance to see it on several occasions over the years.

weird question - was Burdick known to have a "favorite" card or set?

Not that I'm aware of. His collecting interests were very diverse, though his focus changed over time. In the late 1940s, after he had checklisted most of the major insert card sets, published the 1946 American Card Catalog (with the numbering system we know today), decided to donate his collection to the Met, and handed off Card Collector's Bulletin to Charles Bray, Burdick's interest turned almost entirely to postcards. His last two books were about postcards (Handbook of Detroit Co. Postcards, 1953, and Pioneer Postcards, 1957), and his articles in CCB in the 1950s and early 60s were primarily about two subjects: postcards, and his progress organizing and shipping his collection to the Met. He was never all that interested in sports cards, and relied on Lionel Carter, Buck Barker, and John Wagner for a lot of research in that area. When he needed a T206 Wagner in 1948 or 1949 before sending his T206 set to the Met, he announced that need in Card Collector's Bulletin, and I think it was John Wagner who sent him one (the one that's still there glued into an album in the Met).