My recent visit to the Burdick Collection

[barrysloate]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Barry, I don’t know, but I pointed it out to the woman who was helping me and explained to her that it was a very valuable card. She said I must be mistaken and that the only really valuable card was the Wagner. I repeated myself again and then just carefully went on to the next page.

When David Block was doing research for his book on the origins of baseball, I accompanied him one day to the NYPL and decided to do a little hunting myself. To my amazement, I discovered there was an 1893 Harry Wright scorebook as part of the Spalding Collection. It is one I didn't know about when I wrote my article for VCBC, so I asked to see it.

When I opened it to the first page, tucked into front cover was a pristine 1887 World Series scorecard- the sepia one that is no more than a single page foldover. As it was sitting loose in the book, and since I knew it could be worth around 10K, I walked back to the librarian and explained to him that this seeming bookmark was extremely valuable and would be really easy for someone to steal.

He proceeded to glare at me and then walked the other way. He was completely disinterested in what I told him. Apparently, people in jobs of great power don't like to be told what to do. I returned the scorebook and the scorecard shortly thereafter. For all I know, that scorecard may be gone by now. I never found out.