Sterling Baking Powder

The Burdick Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art represents the life work of a man devoted almost entirely to collecting and cataloguing trade cards and other types of paper collectibles. Amassed by Jefferson R. Burdick (1900-1963) who began collecting Amercian ephemera when he was ten years old, his is the finest collection of American trade cards in the United States. Ephemera in the Burdick Collection ranges from advertisements for meat products, milk and bread, women's clothing and shoes, stoves, pianos, cigars, candy, to postcards and playing cards, greeting and souvenir cards, to paper dolls. So absorbed was Burdick by his passion for collecting that he devised a system for categorizing trade cards that was published as The American Card Catalogue in 1939. Subsequent editions appeared every few years until 1960; his system remains in use today.