From what I have heard from UK collectors, a large majority of the collectors from a century ago (of all genres of cigarette cards) were adults, so those cards were less likely to be as tattered as many of the US-based cards collected by children.
I see this more in many of the golf issues, where most of the Bobby Jones issues from the '20s and '30s (and even some of the Copes and Ogdens from 1900-'01) have survived in much better overall condition than their US baseball counterparts.
But to answer the original question, I bet there are plenty of collectors of US baseball cards located in the UK, esp. with the number of US-expats in London.
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