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MarcI read an article about Burdick that said he only had about 3000 original baseball cards - which by that time was considered almost every baseball card ever produced. Now he may have had over 3000 baseball cards when you consider all the duplicates. However, I want to believe it was either Burdick or Lionel Carter who could never obtain the famous T206 Honus Wagner.
Sadly, after Burdick donated his entire collection to the Metropolitan museum, many of his cards were stolen. Apparently, Burdick glued every card to album pages in a scrapbook and the scrapbook was brought out by the museum in a separate room to many children and adults for unsupervised viewing. It was during that time period many valuable cards were stolen. Plus, it has been said that Burdick had at least two of every card he owned. He would glue one card face up on an album page and the duplicate card face down on the back of the same album page so the viewer could read the back of the card as well. Like Barry stated above, the cards weren't considered to worth anything back then. To Burdick, it was more about art and collecting than monetary value.