The ACC is a bit older than 1960.
W cards have always been an odd classification. I understood them as "Issuer unknown" or "type of distribution unknown" which isn't correct and wasn't even when I started collecting.
The Sports collectors bible has no comment about the different letters I guess assuming readers either knew the classifications or would figure it out on their own.
The 1956 edition of the ACC lists them as "Album cards" and including exhibits, cabinets, team issues and other stuff, with the 500's being team issues. Nearly the entire group of strip cards that are now the W500's are under a handful of numbers, W301 -W307 maybe W308 and 309. The listing is that vague.
I'm not sure when the change to expanded listings happened, maybe 1960.
Obviously the 1956 version was sort of a work in progress and subject to some wholesale changes. I can't help but think Burdick would have reclassified sets as more information became available. Just how that would have been done under the general scheme of the ACC is a puzzle. The sections are mostly topical then alphabetical by the name of the set found on the card. Which isn't particularly clear for some sets.
Cataloging is a challenging task, some things are readily classified and have little variety. Some provide a wide array of challenges. In this Hobby we're fortunate to have had the ACC become a standard of sorts. There will be more listings that ought to be moved or added as things are discovered, but at least it provides a consistent framework.
Other hobbies don't have it as easy or sometimes have no catalog at all.
Stamps is a field where there are different catalogs for each country. In the US the Scott catalog is the most common, and it's arranged chronologically, so all the stamps with a design first issued in for instance 1938 are together, even if a particular variety wasn't issued until the 1950's.
But they have different criteria for what is considered a listable variety, or what is even considered listable at all. So the basic stamp might be number 300 but the same stamp came in sheets, booklets and coils. The regular one gets the 300, the entire booklet pane is 300b and the coils get their own numbers 316 and 318. Color or paper changes mean a whole new block of numbers.
They have a worldwide catalog with the same layout.
But not everything gets listed.
Now if you collect British stamps the catalog is done by Stanley Gibbons company. And it has an entirely different layout. Sort of chronologically by group, but if the color or paper got changed it's all together under the listing for the picture on it, so a 2pence stamp issued for 20 years in three different colors has it's own subsection with each major difference in it's own smaller group.
British collectors find the Scott catalog just as confusing as I find the Gibbons. There's even a book available that matches up the numbers since they don't match. Catalogs sometimes even disagree on what year a stamp was issued.
And some of the companies require a licensing fee to use their numbers. Which makes things challenging for someone writing one of the specialist catalogs that cover things in greater detail.
Yep, even for all it's bits that are confusing or haven't aged well, we're very lucky to have the ACC as a standard.
Steve B
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