Jefferson Burdick

Jefferson R. Burdick (1900–1963) was a collector of American printed ephemera, including postcards, posters, cigar bands, and other types of printed materials dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the early 1960s. He is best known for collecting trading and baseball cards in The American Card Catalog, otherwise known as the ACC.

Jefferson Burdick
Burdick with his collection
Born	1900
Died	1963(1963-00-00) (aged 62–63)
Occupation	Collector
Known for	Trading cards collector
Notable work	The American Card Catalog

Burdick donated his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A small part of it is on display at the museum on the first floor of the American Wing. Burdick’s donation to the museum included over 300,000 items, most of them baseball cards. In her biographic essay on Burdick, Allison Rudnick, curator in the Metropolitan Museum Department of Drawings and Prints, recounts that Burdick’s cataloging system grew out of the condition that the museum placed on his donation: the Met would only accept his vast collection if he agreed to catalog it. Burdick agreed and spent 15 years working at the museum's drawings and prints department to accomplish the task, which he finished in January 1963. He died three months later. His gravestone reads, "One of the greatest card collectors of all times."

The Burdick system is still used today by collectors and dealers. The famed T206 baseball card set received its popularized name from the set's designation in the ACC. Many other baseball card sets are popularly known by their ACC designation, including: T205, E93, M116 and R313.