Burdick's T206 and other cards collection

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Posted By: David Davis

Has anyone ever wondered how many 1000's of T206 and other cards Burdick must have owned. From what I have read, his collection does not have a vast number of duplicates. He catalogued hundreds of sets, and most likely owned every card he catalogued.

How many 1000's of cards did he have to purchase in order to build his collection, put together checklists, etc?

Back in the day, I don't think he could have looked through someone's cards, found the 2 or 3 he needed, and paid, what, a nickel a card? He had to have purchased hundreds of collections to build the ACC.

What does everyone think happened to the rest of the cards?

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

Burdick worked together with other collectors assembling the check lists. He did not do it on his own as far as I know.

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Posted By: David Davis

True enough, but he still must have purchased a lot of cards, and had dupes.

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Posted By: leon

I believe it was a collaboration of several folks with Burdick spearheading it. The majority of Burdick’s collection was not baseball cards but postcards, trading cards and playing cards - any paper product ...he would collect it. I think he still had about 30,000 baseball cards but his collection numbered in the 300,000's....

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Posted By: barrysloate

I believe when word got out that Burdick was putting this massive collection together for the museum, other collectors simply gave him cards he needed. Remember, he started the project in the 1940's and at the time they were for the most part worthless. And he did not have a complete collection of baseball cards. He is missing many cards and many sets.

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Posted By: Marc

I 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.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

I've seen a good chunk of the Burdick collection while researching my book. I've also got a copy of the book indexing the collection.

The vast majority is not baseball cards.

He did not have two of each card. He had one of as many front variations as he could and usually as many of the backs as he could, glued face-down so you could see them.

His completion was spotty. He had tons of N172s (a whole book), only a few of some of the caramel cards (he had 2 E211 Yorks, for example, but a pretty full fronts set of E210s).

The Wagner was not stolen. I saw it on display at the Met.

The 1933 Lajoie was gone.

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Posted By: Jim VB

Burdick had, what has been described as, "a handful" of the Goudey Lajoie cards. Goudey had sent him 8-10 was the estimate. He, in turn, forwarded 2-3 to Carter who did not have one. These were part of the recent Mastro auctions.

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Posted By: Jim VB

I apologize. I've been corrected. I re-read the article and Burdick gave a single copy to Carter, not 2-3. Sorry for the bad info.

(Thanks, Brian.)

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Posted By: Bruce Dorskind

In the Fall 1986 edition of The Old Judge, Lew Lipset took the time to interview
legendary baseball card collector Gene DeNardo. In his interview Denardo goes
into great detail with regard to the circumstances surrounding Burdick's
decision to donate his card collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

DeNardo also reviews in some detail the assistance that Burdick received from
Charles Bray.

About 25 years ago we held a number of meetings with Sir Edward-Wharton Tigar
(whose collection of tobacco cards now resides in the British Museum). He told
us that he did a great deal of "trading" with Bray, and Bray and Burdick were
quite close. We do not recall if Sir Edward ever mentioned meeting Burdick.

An even more impressive collection than Burdick's resides in The Library of
Congress. Each photograph from the LOC collection (most of which emanates
from one distinguished collector) can be viewed on line.


Bruce Dorskind
America's Toughest Want List

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Posted By: bcornell

Benjamin Edwards Collection at L.O.C.

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Posted By: MW

<< The 1933 Lajoie was gone. >>

As of 1995, it was still part of the Museum's collection and was on public display for a period of time. I would estimate it was in Near Mint condition (could not see the reverse side).

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Posted By: barrysloate

When I first saw the collection in the 80's the Lajoie was there, but hinged with a light piece of adhesive tape. Corey Shanus and I talked about how it would just be a matter of time before it was stolen. Corey even alerted someone that it was worth about 10K, and all they did- now get this- is stick a piece of paper next to it stating "this card is worth $10,000."

So of course what happens- somebody steals it. Just great.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

which is one of the factors that led to the collecting being closed to the public.

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Posted By: Larry

There are a handful of private collections spanning 1887-1914 that are larger than Edwards' 2100 cards, but only about three collections larger than Burdick's 30,000+ from the timeframe his collection spans (sportscards only) held in private hands. Quantity comparisons are easier to judge than quality comparisons, so not as sure about that. Burdick glued and taped his cards to albums, so there would be significant damage to them. Also am not sure how Edwards' cards are affixed in the LOC albums?

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Posted By: Dave Williams

Link to article about Burdick's collection.

http://www.oldbaseball.com/refs/burdick.html

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Posted By: Phil Michel

The Edwards cards at LOC were originally tucked into slotted pages and filed in 3-ring binders. Some were wrapped in cellophane 5-up and sealed with tape, but no adhesive was in contact with the cards. Some of the cards he acquired appeared to have a history of album mounting from previous owners. When the collection was scanned the cards were rehoused into top loaders with buffered paper backings.

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Posted By: E, Daniel

Great read on the elusive hunt for memories of Burdick.....


Daniel