Selections from the Collection of Jefferson R. Burdick

The Burdick collection of baseball cards constitutes an integral part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection of ephemera and tells the history of popular printmaking in the United States. In 1947, after having approached A. Hyatt Mayor, the Museum's curator of prints and photographs, the Syracuse electrician Jefferson R. Burdick (1900–1963) began to donate his entire collection of over 30,000 baseball cards in large batches, along with another 303,000 trade cards, postcards, and posters, to the Museum.