Issue No. 2 Winter 2003 (January)

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Before football was even a fully-evolved sport, there were some football cards floating around. They were not cards in the traditional sense, but were more like paper souvenirs along the lines of advertising premiums, cut outs, and paper dolls.

Pioneer collector Jefferson Burdick gave many of these unique items formal designations in his classic work, AMERICAN CARD CATALOG (ACC). Advanced hobbyists know them by the collective term “scraps.”

The term “scraps” comes from a portion of Burdick’s main collection, as described in the ACC. Sections 27 and 31 of the book differentiate these scrap specimens from other cards. The material in Burdick’s book details his renowned collection, (now housed in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art). The Burdick collection holds four full albums and five boxes devoted to 19^th century scraps.