Hobby history: The 1946 American Card Catalog

[trdcrdkid]

As a followup to my recent post on Jefferson Burdick's 1939 United States Card Collectors Catalog (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=241036), I thought I would do one on the next edition, the 1946 American Card Catalog, which introduced the numbering system we're all familiar with (T206, T205, etc.). Unfortunately, I don't own a copy of the 1946 ACC -- it's the only edition I don't have -- but I do have some of Burdick's articles in Card Collector's Bulletin from around the time he published it, and I also have scans of hobby pioneer Walter Corson's annotated copy of the 1946 ACC, which is now owned by a member of this board.

The first scan below is Burdick's lead article in the February 1, 1946 CCB (#40), announcing the upcoming publication of the new catalog. I previously posted this article last September when I posted the entire issue (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=228257), but I'm reposting it here for convenience. Unfortunately, I don't have the next issue of CCB (#41), which presumably contained the followup article promised by Burdick, but I do have the rest of the issues from 1946, each of which has something about the catalog. I've posted each of these articles preceded by the date of the issue; they cover the publication of the 1946 catalog and the feedback Burdick got on it. Yes, collectors were just as opinionated 70 years ago as they are now.

Following that is the title page and several pages from the catalog itself. These are from a copy in which someone, presumably the original owner, has made many annotations in ink (and some in pencil). These include additions of new sets, updated prices, notations of where Burdick had printed checklists of certain sets in Card Collectors Bulletin from 1939 to 1944 (Burdick numbered all those checklists sequentially), and much more. There are also additional sheets tipped in for more notes, one of which I've added after the page of 1930s baseball sets.

The previous owner of this copy, "Jeff", posted scans from it on the non-sport Network54 board on February 18, 2015 (that thread is here: http://www.network54.com/Forum/52660...llectors+Guide), but nobody over there knew who the author of the annotations was. Jeff subsequently sold the volume to a member of this board, Jason19th, who posted about it here on May 27, 2015, asking if anybody knew who the original owner might have been. (See here: http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=206522.) I was the only one who replied, and I didn't know, but I remarked on how cool the volume was.

More recently, I was looking at those scans again, and I thought the handwriting looked familiar. I finally realized that it's the handwriting of Walter Corson, who I wrote a long post about last December (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=232220). In the replies to that post, Leon posted a want list that Corson had made on an index card, and was among a bunch of Corson's hobby stuff that Leon bought. I've included that card at the end of this post, so you can compare it to the annotations and extra notes from that 1946 ACC. It's obviously the same handwriting, with numerous distinctive features; for example, check out Corson's capital "G" in T205 BB Gold Border, and compare it to the capital G's in the page of notes just above it, in "Game birds" or "Geo. Washington". I feel confident in saying that Jason19th's copy of the 1946 American Card Catalog originally belonged to Walter Corson.



June 1, 1946


August 1, 1946


October 1, 1946



December 1, 1946