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Posted By: William Heitman

Ted, my friend, the ACC was updated throughout the '60's and '70's by way of Charles Bray's Monthly Card Update. And Burt Sugar's Sports Collector's Bible tried to do the same. To even just slightly scrap the old system (and I don't know if that's the right word) would be a boon to the grading services. And it wouldn't do much for the hobby. I don't know about you, but I just couldn't care less what catalog number we call 1993 Upper Deck. I would have loved to see T206 broken down into its very obvious subsets and the like, but it's 45 years too late. Jeff Burdick is long gone now and Shoeless Joe is never going into the Hall of Fame (even though I would argue that he is already there). Like so much in card collecting, the American Card Catalog was just a beginning--an early attempt to assemble so much into something that made a little sense. It worked. But it was not the word of God and it certainly wasn't the last word on cards. It has been a useful tool. By the way, the ACC did not list 19th Century Tobacco cards as N something. They were merely the number. Old Judge Baseball was catalog # 172, not N172. It's surprising to me how few have actually looked at the book itself.