The Numbers Game

As promised last time out, today we'll be looking at how Jefferson Burdick and his editorial acolytes, especially Buck Barker, shifted around the numbering system used in the American Card Catalog.  Barker (I assume it was he) eventually came up with a useful system for companies like Topps that had a number of annual issues but it was never really used by collectors.  Instead, the alphanumeric numbering used in the 1960 ACC has been "locked in" and remains the standard after 60+ years.

Using a famous example, the T206 set, was originally designated simply and numerically as "521" in the 1939 catalog, the became the alphanumeric T206 in 1946.  For the Bowman and Topps comparison, the 1946 ACC is useless as it predates card issues from both companies, although I note Bowman's predecessor was Gum Inc. and that company would certainly have had 1939 entries; alas, I do not have that catalog or access to any portion of it.

So we will start with Bowman's 1948 Baseball set. Every post needs an image, so let's go with the very underrated (in my view, at least) Stan Musial rookie card:

The 1953 ACC has the set as R701, while in 1960 it's the far more familiar R406-1 as suffixes became introduced for companies with regular issues (or varieties within their issues).  Here's the full Bowman Baseball comparison:

Year of Issue              1953                  1960

1948                           R701                 R406-1          

1949                           R708                 R406-2

1949  PCL                  R721                 R406-3

1950                           R713                 R406-4

1951                           R715                 R406-5

1952                           R724                 R406-6

1953 Color                 N/A                   R406-7

1953 B&W                 N/A                   R406-8

1954                           N/A                   R406-9

1955                           N/A                   R406-10

The 1960 Guide assigned the "400" level to Sports Issues Since 1948. These were sub-headed as follows:

R401-Leaf Gum Co., Chicago

R405-Bowman Gum Co. Basketball

R406-Bowman Gum Co., Baseball Issues

R407-Bowman Football Issues

R410-Pro Basketball

R411-Ringside

R412-Topps Hockey

R414-Topps Chewing Gum (T.C.G.), Baseball Issues

R415-Topps Football Issues

R416-Frank H. Fleer Baseball Issues

R410 was the Topps 1957-8 Basketball set in a solo listing and R411 just had Ringside obviously.  So very inconsistent entries were legion in this section.

Other Bowman issues such as Football and even those from companies like Topps and Leaf were interspersed in the somewhat chronological number assignment in the 1953 guide before being corralled by sport and year in 1960. A lot of information was packed into a single line or two as well.  For example, using 1953 and under the headings of Issues Since 1948, then Sports Issues:

R700- Sport Thrills (20) Swell gum  (Phila. Chew. gum) b&w _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .02

R701- Baseball Players (48)  Bowman gum, medium, b&w (Play Ball 1948) _  _ .02

R702- Babe Ruth Story (28) Swell gum, medium, b&w _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.02

R703- Touchdown Football (108) Bowman gum, medium, b&w  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.02

R704- Basketball Series (72) Bowman gum, medium  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.02
           (Portraits and diagrams)

Burdick squeezed in the ACC number, set count, gum name, issuer name, size and and b&w notation, plus a price and even some variety information as warranted!  

The editors in 1960 were no slouches with information compression either.  Here's the 1955 Bowman Baseball entry:

1955. 10-Color TV Set (320) 2 1/2 x 3 3/4 (251-310 5c).... .03

           Error and Corr. cards No. 48-101-157-205... .15        

That was under a heading that read: R406-Bowman Gum Co., Baseball Issues, all numbered. 

That's a whole mess of detail in two lines, isn't it? But in a time where reproducing photos was expensive, not to mention how much space they would have to consume, it's a simple and elegant way to describe a set, including a reference to high numbers and variations. I'm wondering though, if the typesetter went home and cried every night....

The Topps story is even more labyrinthian.  Under Issues Since 1948 we get:

Set                                            1953                  1960

Bazooka Comics                      R500                 R711-3       

It Happened to A President      R501                 R711-5

Story of the Atom Bomb          R503                R709-3 

     

-et al, then for some more well known sets: 

         Set                                             1953                   1960
         Wings                                        R534                   R707-4
          Look 'N' See                             R534                   R714-16
          Fighting Marines                      R533                   R709-1

Wow!  So what changed? Well, the 1960 guide started with sub-categories under the General Issues Since 1948 section.  There was, to name but a few:

R701-Bowman Gum Co, or B.G.H.L.I.

R707-Topps Chewing Gum (T.C.G.) Airplane Cards

R708-Topps Cartoon Cards

Somewhat haphazard, just like the 400's. 

Topps only had a handful of issues when the 1953 ACC was issued.  Here is the comparison to 1960:

Year        Set                                               1953                  1960

 N/A       Topps Varsity gum                       R712                 R415-1         

1951       Baseball Players Topps gum        R716                R414-5

1951       Connie Mack's                             R717                 R414-2

1951       Baseball Team Pictures                R718                 R414-4

1951       Major League All-Stars               R719                 R414-3

1951       Magic Football                            R720                  R415-2

N/A        Ringside                                       R723                  R411

1952       Baseball Players                          R725                  R414-6

I've abbreviated a bit for space but you get the idea using the 1953 guide as the basis for the set descriptions.  The 1960 Guide assigned the "400" level to Sports Issue and it was still a bit inconsistent, with years of issue not always shown, etc. There was definitely more detail in the 1960 ACC but you sometimes had to use your imagination.

You can get lost in this stuff and that's not my intention here.  Rather, I want to show how Buck Barker started assigning listings in the Updates. The January 23, 1966 seventh catalog additions that ran in Card Collectors Bulletin still followed the 1960 scheme. Then Barker had a long section on Catalog Corrections, covering both the 1960 book and the updates that had followed. At the end of these he makes some comments, such as this: "Also believe R414 Topps baseball should be broken into 3 sets. 1 -baseball cards, 2-Bazooka baseball, 3-paper baseball issues."

The updates were somewhat themed, so Barker didn't get back to the R cards until the ninth set of additions of February 1, 1968, where he still was using the 1960 system.  The latest Topps entry I can find in that update is for Who Am I?, designated R714-38 and noted as "scratch-offs, 1967." The next (and last) R card update was from the June 1, 1971 CCB. Barker has now gone to a new system that uses the suffix to designate the year of issue.  It looked like this:

R403-68    Bazooka PD. Baseball

R403-69-1 Bazooka Baseball Extra

R403-69-2 Bazooka Baseball All Time Greats

So you get the grouping for Bazooka then the year and variety within follows.  What a neat and orderly method! For some of the regular and irregular Topps Baseball issues, Barker went with:

R413-70-1 BB Scratch Off Cards 1970

R413-70-2 BB Story Booklets 1970 

R413-70-3 Baseball Stars Candy 1970

R414-68 Topps 1968 Baseball Cards

R414-69 Topps 1969 Baseball Cards

R414-70-1 Topps 1970 Baseball Cards

R414-70-2 Topps Baseball Cloth Stickers (Barker notes blank backs, test set)

R414-71 Topps 1971 Baseball (6 series)

Kinks were clearly being worked out but a more useful system had been devised.  At a guess, this was done in the wake of the 1967 ACC failing to launch and the "think tank"duties  moving on to either Barker or others along with his input.  With a little more refinement this could have been a really good way to move forward.  With grading companies no longer having a generally accepted reference to, well, refer to, at least since the Standard Catalog went poof, it seems like some method to keep the ACC alphanumeric scheme alive would be worthwhile.

AC See Ya!

No, not Atlantic City, where I opted out of this year's National Sports Collectors Convention but rather the American Card Catalog. Jefferson Burdick's groundbreaking and indispensable guide to the hobby of collecting trading cards and other similar items, first published in 1939 as The United States Card Collectors Catalog (USCCC) and intended to be updated and reissued every seven years.  Burdick started writing about the guide in 1938 in the Card Collectors Bulletin (CCB), his early hobby publication, in the mid 1930's after using the 'zine as a resource for set checklists, finds and other hobby news since early 1937, after branching out from a couple of years of similar content in a column run by Hobbies magazine. The mid-30's were essentially the start of what we now refer to as the organized hobby, although it would be several decades before it really got going and identifiable dealers came into the fray.

Loose-leafed for 1939, the USCCC was designed to allow the insertion of annual updates, which were issued through 1942 (with a scant one-pager in 1943) until the war precluded any additional leaves being sold in 1944 or 1945. While bareboned and lacking individual checklists, the catalog was still the most relaible (and essentially only) guide available and started the classification system many old time (and some newer) hobbyists still use. In addition, it had rudimentary pricing, another valuable feature. George Vrechek has written an excellent overview of all this, and many other Burdick related subjects over at the Old Baseball site, which I urge you to read if this at all interests you.

Here is the ur-catalog:

Note the punch holes.  The Card Collectors Bulletins could also be inserted into the book as Burdick issued them with holes punched out.

In 1946, renamed and mostly rewritten with letters added to what was strictly a numbering scheme prior, a staple-bound soft cover American Card Catalog was offered by Burdick without an option to add updates directly to the book; you can see bits and pieces of it over at Net54baseball, where David Kathman has written and posted extensively on this volume. The 1939 book and to a slightly lesser degree the 1946 are very collectible and can bring some big prices, the former being printed in edition of only 500 and apparently not selling through until 1945. Here she is, courtesy of REA:

  

I believe those holes were punched "after market" as Burdick had major issues getting the books punched originally. The fasteners must have done a number on things as well.

This was followed by a more robust ACC in in 1953, that featured Woody Gelman as one of its editors then a 1956, hard-to-find reprint, likely created to raise some additional cash and update the buy and sell ads in the back of the book.   This is the 1953 cover:

The '56 reprint had a more orange cover and sold for $2.50, a half-dollar more than the 1953 edition:

(Courtesy REA)

And this the 1960, the final, updated ACC, in hardback:

Burdick had by then turned over the tracking of updates to Buck Barker, who published regular and extensive updates in the CCB after this book came out, as he worked on mounting his massive collection for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Burdick died in 1963 and Gelman was supposed to issue a 1967 guide with updated information but despite Barker's massive efforts at cataloguing the tsunami of issues that had been unleashed since the mid 50's, it didn't come out, for reasons that have never been determined.  

Gelman did put out a soft cover, reprinted 1960 edition though in '67 and with, I think, new ads:

Barker's updates continued until early 1972 and thankfully were collected in a hard-to-find, authorized  pamphlet issued by Chris Benjamin in 1990 (some were assembled in a similar, likely bootleg, fashion by Ed Broder in the early 70's):

 

Barker attempted to revamp the listings for some of the more current issues toward the end of the Sixties but without a full book, this innovative attempt at revision never took within the hobby, but the Catalog was always a metamorphic; some classifications were revised every seven years and a chunk of the ones we know today, especially for Topps and Bowman, were only locked in via the 1960 book.  Reissues of the 1960 guide were put out by Richard Gelman via Woody's old Nostalgia Press imprint in 1988 and again a year later (and/or possibly a year earlier as I can't cipher it right now) as Card Collectors Company used the ad space in back for their current catalog .  Here's my 1988, which I use all the time:

There's a nice Woody Gelman connection here but the classification changes are my real quarry.  I'll be looking at the progression of the Topps and Bowman issues from 1953 and through Buck Barker's updates next time out.

Across The Pond With The ACC

This will be a final look at the 1953 American Card Catalog's advertising section, previously discussed here and here. Today we are traveling to Merry Olde England, where the hobby of collecting "cigarette cards" was a bit more established (and respectable) than in the Colonies.

While probably not the first firm to sell tobacco cards to collectors, The London Cigarette Card Company certainly the oldest still in existence today at 85 years young and the source of many cards in the hands of U.S. collectors. I remember being hugely disappointed the first time I was in London and finding out they had moved to the countryside about fifteen years earlier:

You can see they were already on their second price guide by 1953 and collector's conventions were already established.  Cigarette Card News has since been renamed Card Collector's News and is a relatively youthful 74years old. Their managing director, Ian Laker, was responsible for putting this crisp and succinct guide together on A&BC's cards:

That is the 3rd (and latest) edition from 2004.  You can still order it, along with many other reference works, from LCCC if you are so inclined. A&BC cards have been discussed here a couple of times and will be looked at again in more depth sometime soon.

Here is an intriguing enticement from the Universal Cigarette Card company.  Having been to London many times in the past (although sadly, not of late) I highly doubt you could fund your trip by selling off your duplicate tobacco cards even in their postwar recovery phase:

I've left the Edward Morrill ad in this image as it helps show the wide range of paper goods being looked for by advertisers in the ACC. Those Prang Album cards by Winslow Homer are quite famous and still coveted today.

Edward Wharton-Tigar, perhaps the most famous collectors ever and one of the few to warrant an obituary in The New York Times, also took out a small ad, looking for trade partners:

There are a handful of other ads from England included, even one from Italy but I'll conculde with one from The Cartophilic Society of Great Britain, publishers of the landmark World Tobacco Index, which was the first great compilation of cigarette cards:

The Cartophilic Society of Great Britain is still with us as well, still producing guidebooks and offering a lending library of reference books to members.


The hobbyists who advertised in the 1953 ACC were persevering sorts who had developed a system of trust since all trading was done though the mail and often with people you had never met. It could take weeks, if not months, for cards to arrive on one side of the Atlantic Ocean from the other.  While today we have almost instantaneous transactions and cards can be sent halfway around the world in two days, the trust level is quite a bit lower and we are all the worse off.

ACC Ads, You See

As promised in our last adventure, here are a few more ads from the 1953 American Card Catalog, featuring some very prominent collectors of the day. We'll feature US collectors today, British one next time out.

Goody Goldfaden, one of the original, if not the original, hobby dealers, ran his business (Adco Sports Book Exchange) out of a garage in Los Angeles and just passed away this year at the ripe old age of 97. Here is his ad from '53:

You can see Charles Bray (Associate Editor in charge of Prices), who ran a well known mail order auction that populated many an early collection, had an ad on the same page as well; the odds were good you could find one of his within as he had five or six of them scattered throughout the advertising section.  His main one though, is here:

Not to be outdone -although he was outnumbered - Gene De Nardo (Associate Editor in charge of Copy Revision) also had an ad in place:

De Nardo was in charge of the Post War R card section as well.  It is worth noting Jefferson Burdick also had an ad, one that was quite informative as to his collection-mounting activities for the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Typically for Burdick the ad was not in a place of prominence nor did he use up a full page.  Another famous collector, although not an editor, who had an ad was Lionel Carter:

Almost all of the buying and selling in 1953 was done by mail-there is only one ad with a phone number listed!

ACC, You Know Me

Most, if not all, vintage collectors have run across the American Card Catalog as they assemble sets and compile wantlists.  Jefferson Burdick's masterwork saw four major editions, the last of which came out in 1960 which is the one most familiar to almost all current collectors.  It's the ACC that gave us descriptions such as T-206, R414-1 and C46, although most collectors do not use such nomenclature anymore for issues that came out in 1933 or later. Back when almost all hobby information was done via the U.S. Mail though, such numbering schemes were quite helpful.

This is not intended to be a brief history of the ACC; there are a couple out there already (one is mine in The Wrapper #262 and Geroge Vrechek has written extensively on Burdick and the ACC over in the Library section at www.oldbaseball.com ) and a major one is in the works from what I know if it.  Rather I want to look at one editor and two ads in the 1953 edition.

Jefferson Burdick had ceded some editorial control by 1953 and Charles Bray, Gene De Nardo and Woody Gelman had been added to the masthead.  Woody was listed as the Associate Editor in Charge of Advertising and Publication, a job which likely meant he had access to a printer that could run the catalog off cheaply (it retailed for $2) and that he coordinated the ads, of which there were 21 pages out of 168 total.  One of the ads though, was a real beaut: 

Wow, right?! Woody clearly knew in advance the publication details and worked to have a super advertising piece made up. The great thing about this ad, other than its inherent wonderfulness, is that is shows some major Topps issues up to the end of 1952 (the guide was published in February 1953 and contains no references to any 1953 issues). Wings is clearly a 1952 issue, as is Look "N' See, while the ad touts sets that were released as far back as 1950. The Non-Sports Post War listings also prove this out:

You can see details of the full releases of the multi-series Wings, Look 'N' See and Fighting Marines (thought by some to be a '53 issue) sets. It is also obvious the numbering scheme used in 1953 changed by the time the 1960 edition was released and the latter is what has been "locked" into collector's minds.  Wings, shown above as R534, is known today as R707-4 while Look 'N' See, above as R536, is now R714-16. I am fairly certain these sets in this section were shown in their order of release (or as close as possible for the time) as compiled by Gene DeNardo.

As for Bowman, they had an ad but it paled in comparison to Topps':

Warren Bowman had been gone over 18 months by the time the '53 ACC was published and I suspect he would have come up with something a little splashier had he still been around. That ad just reeks of corporate stuffiness.

The guide itself is very well made.  I have a copy that was clearly used for years back in the day (and gets quite a bit of handling from me as well) and while the cover is a bit creased, the interior pages are holding up remarkably well, as is the binding.  This is good news since it allows us to take a clear look at some advertisers of the day.  Here is a "permanent" want list from Woody Gelman himself:

That street address for Woody is the office of Solomon and Gelman at the time. S&G was an art service that did a lot, if not all, of the illustration work and design for Topps commencing about 1949 and Ben Solomon would eventually end up as the Art Director at Topps in the 60's and 70's with final say over all released printed product.  Woody seems to have come in-house at Topps while still working as a partner at S&G until at least 1957; at some point around that time he became a full time Topps employee. Ben and Woody probably first met at the Fleischer Brothers animation studio in the 1930's and a lot of early Topps employees and artists worked there as well.

Another well known figure who advertised in the '53 ACC was Dr. Lawrence Kurzrok, a famous early collector and facilitator:

Dr. Kurzrok was very early on aware of Topps:

That is his office address.  I wonder how many early advertisers used an office address instead of their home one?

I'll look at some more advertisers in the '53 ACC next time out, even though they are not really related to Topps, as it's just a fun area of the hobby to explore.


(Apologies if this post displays incorrectly-Blogger is doing something weird to my vertical spacing and I have no idea how to control it-yikes!)