The making of - "Handbook To US Early Candy and Gum Cards" - Egan, 1969

[Leon]

The history of the hobby is fascinating to many of us. The "HANDBOOK TO U.S. EARLY CANDY AND GUM BASEBALL ISSUES" Egan, 1969, is one of the classic works of early hobbyists. To those that might not know, Richard Egan set out, with some other collectors, to detail each set and each card in the American Card Catalog's "E" section, where they pertained to baseball players only. (The ACC listed all the sets together with rudimentary information and value of each). These collectors were going to change the numbering system of the Candy (E) cards in the ACC too. The baseball issues would be segregated from other early candy issues. And last but not least, the original plan was to have a picture of a front and back of each card. The Handbook, and these unique letters will explain the reasoning behind it's existence, details of how cards were check-listed and the new catalog numbers moving forward. Since we mostly use the original ACC#'s today it doesn't seem like the new numbering scheme stuck. Regardless, it is an interesting subject and this thread will go through the entire initial origination process of the key people on the Handbook project Richard Egan, Buck Barker and Dick Dobbins. This Handbook was from one of a few collections of hobby publications acquired recently.

[teetwoohsix]

Great score Leon !! I am also a fan of the hobby history myself, this would be a great read. Thanks for posting this.

Sincerely, Clayton

[Fred]

Leon,

How many pages are in that publication?

[Leon]

Originally Posted by teetwoohsix

Great score Leon !! I am also a fan of the hobby history myself, this would be a great read. Thanks for posting this.

Sincerely, Clayton

Hi Fred
The Handbook is a great read. The documents I will sharing are beyond that, imo. As stated, I want this to be a chronologically correct thread and what's coming is really neat and will be in order. Intermittent comments are welcomed. best regards

[FrankWakefield]

Fred, Mr. Egan numbered the pages so that the cover depicted above is page 1. The inside back cover is an index, and it has page 83 on it. the outside back cover is blank, and would be page 84. Mr. Egan's Handbook is quite interesting, reading it enables someone to understand Mr. Burdick's system a bit better, and to understand what was known about the cards back in 1969. Leon's copy above, with the inscription, is a true treasure.

[Leon]

more in the chronology from before the Handbook was even thought about until it's first inspiration (shown before but goes in this thread)....and since Dick Dobbins contributed (and there are these docs and more to show it) I want to get this Jan., 1966 letter in too.

[NonSportDaniel]

This is great; I have been after this book for a while and have never been able to come across a copy.

The only Egan item in my collection is a copy of the World Tobacco Index that passed through his.

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