1. Jefferson R Burdick was an American electrician and a collector of printed ephemera, including postcards, posters, cigar bands, and other types of printed materials dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the early 1960s.
15 Facts About Jefferson Burdick
1. 2.
Jefferson Burdick is best known for collecting trading and baseball cards in The American Card Catalog, otherwise known as the ACC.
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Jefferson Burdick was born in Central Square, New York in 1900.
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Jefferson Burdick graduated from Central High School in 1918, and worked as a farm laborer with his family before attending Syracuse University in late 1920.
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Jefferson Burdick held a variety of jobs after graduation, including working in advertising at The Syracuse Herald before becoming an electrician, which was his primary occupation.
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Jefferson Burdick developed arthritis during his thirties, which continued to affect him throughout his life.
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Jefferson Burdick became interested in collecting again in 1933, when he began amassing cards and stamps in earnest.
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Jefferson Burdick established his system of cataloguing cards in the CCB.
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The reasons why Jefferson Burdick chose to glue his cards into albums is unknown, as he advised collectors to use corner mounting to preserve cards in the CCB.
10.
George Vrechek, in "Jefferson Burdick Revisted", theorizes that Jefferson Burdick chose glue to ensure that cards were not lost and the collection remained complete so that posterity could enjoy it.
11.
Jefferson Burdick donated his entire collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1947.
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Jefferson Burdick retired from Crouse-Hinds in 1959 due to disability, and moved to Madison Avenue where he could be closer to the Met.
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Jefferson Burdick spent 15 years working at the museum's drawings and prints department to accomplish the task of cataloging the collection, which he finished in January 1963.
14.
In 2018, Jefferson Burdick was posthumously awarded the Henry Chadwick Award by the Society for American Baseball Research.
15.
The Jefferson Burdick system is still widely used today by collectors and dealers of baseball memorabilia.