First appearance of hyphenated prewar card sets in catalogs and the market?
 

I'm researching W515-1 and W515-2 sets, which picked up those hyphenated differences sometime well after Burdick first assigned W515 in the ACC.

The ACC provided a long list of categories and subcategories that led to the majority of today's N/T/E/W/R card categories (N172, T206, E120, W516, etc.). In the decades since its 1960 edition, many hyphenated subsets have entered the collecting market. Does anyone know when these dashed subcategories first appeared? Most of the time, they distinguish checklist or subtle design differences within things that otherwise seem similar.

For all the sets I've looked at over the years, I can't remember the first time they showed hyphens. Where they part of one of the 70s/80s catalogs that followed ACC?

Maybe I am not understanding your question correctly but the hyphenated ACC # was the way Burdick and the ACC intended things to be listed.

Here is my 1953 ACC...

Thanks, that does more or less answer my question! As something already provided for in the ACC, looks like hyphenated numbers appeared at some point in its original development or later refinement.

It looks like letters were used before hyphens to denote subseries. I'll dig into some old Card Collectors Bulletins to see if I can find the first use of hyphens. The 1946 ACC and supplements to 1949 didn't use them. But the years between 49-52 need to be looked at.

In other news, Wags and Plank are now worth the same amount! I'll take a dozen of each. And Old Judges are a dime.
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