Anson Whaley selected as winner of 2025 SABR Jefferson Burdick Award
Anson Whaley was selected as the winner of the 2025 Jefferson Burdick Award, which honors individuals who have made significant contributions to the baseball card hobby, by SABR’s Baseball Cards Research Committee.
Whaley’s websites on early baseball cards — first at prewarcards.com from 2016 until its sale in 2024 and now at prewarcollector.com — have become the go-to source for checklists and information about pre-World War II card sets of all types and a repository of knowledge worthy of recognition. His work with pre-war cards situates baseball cards themselves as part of the larger collecting universe which existed in the first half of the twentieth century.
Click here to read more about Whaley’s work and influence at the SABR Baseball Cards Blog.
Jefferson R. Burdick (1900–63) was a pioneer card collector whose invented classifications still govern the hobby; he donated his enormous collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remains one of the most popular destinations for researchers. He created The American Card Catalog, the bible of the hobby, and tribute is paid to his lifelong work whenever anyone brings up T-206 or N-162 or other codes common in card collecting. To learn more about his life and legacy, click here.
To learn more about the Burdick Award, click here.
Originally published: June 29, 2025. Last Updated: July 2, 2025.