Hi David, I really like your approach and laud your obsession! It actually sounds very much like George Brace himself, albeit a somewhat different methodology. I'd be interested to see what other white whales you happened upon as well. While I have been drawn away from "image collecting" somewhat in recent years, I have dabbled a bit, and find that I enjoy locating the obscurities nearly as much as the HOFers. While not as financially rewarding (usually), filling those voids of visual knowledge, or occasionally putting a piece back in the hands of an appreciative family member is always enjoyable.
If you have not already, you might touch base with Net54 member tnfoto and consider adding higher-res images to SABR's pictorial archive of baseball players. I haven't touched base with him in a while, and it looks like he hasn't posted here in even longer, but he can point you in the right direction. There is a dedicated group of image collectors such as yourself who are working on various side projects similar to your own, and who I'm sure would appreciate the opportunity to share resources.
As for the Burke/Brace collection itself, I haven't heard anything of the remainder of it since that particular auction you mentioned. There were a large number of pieces sold from the archive prior to the auction, but those were mostly the HOFers and stars. I would love it if the remaining images were ever made available again for the sake of historians, but knowing from experience the time and/or expense involved in scanning film, I wonder if the buyer ever followed through on that endeavor. If none of the MLB teams bit on his offer to cut a deal for their respective chunks of the archive, all that film containing the original images of long-lost/little-known players may still be languishing in storage somewhere.
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