Talking about American Card Catalogs

[toppcat]

The blue paperback is the 67 edition, there is a later one from 1988 that is green and also reprints the 1960 ACC. These two were put out by Woody Gelman (1967) and then his son Richard (1988). After the 1960 edition only updates were done, usually if not exclusively printed in the CCB but I am not sure if they mailed these out to non CCB subscribers if someone requested one. The last update is from Feb, 1972.

As noted above Chris Benjamin issued a pamphlet of these updates in 1990 and in it he takes Woody Gelman to task for not issuing a new version in '67, just a reprint. Benjamin asserts that the information for a full 1967 ACC with new and updated information had been prepared (presumably by Buck Barker, perhaps meaning the updates from CCB )but the project never got off the ground. Buck Barker, who took over as keeper of the information in 1960 is alleged to have finally realized Woody was not going to issue another ACC and that is why the updates died in Feb. 72. Woody was breaking down physically by then I think so who knows what the real story was.

What # did CCB end with, it went on for a long time after Burdick died and then after Barker passed even. The last ACC update appeared in issue #191. Sports issues, especially baseball, were somewhat cataloged in various guides during the 70's but a lot of information on non sport or less popular pastimes was lost after the updates stopped. A shame the rest of the span did not have updates issued for it and I am pretty sure the post war cards, if not all R cards, would all have been reworked to have the year show for each issue by then, like they started to do at the end of the 60's in the updates.

Here is the 1988 reprint, I use this book all the time:



Here is a Dec 1989 CCB, must be one of the last ones: