My recent visit to the Burdick Collection

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Do you think someone was trying to pull it out of the album, and take it home as a souvenir of their visit?

Someone steal cards from a public place? Surely that doesn't happen.

[barrysloate]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Someone steal cards from a public place? Surely that doesn't happen.

And they always try to steal the most valuable ones. The commons remain in the collection in perpetuity.

[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.

[benjulmag]

The last time I tried to point out to someone at the Burdick collection that a valuable card (the Goudey Lajoie) was not being safe guarded well, here is what happened. The card was adhered to the album page by a single piece of adhesive tap. It was dangling in the page and if someone closed the book the wrong way, it would fold the card in half. Add to this that at that time (in the 80's or 90's) you would be sitting alone in a room with a single person at the front who often was focused on doing other things than watching you. It would have been no effort at all to the pull the tape out of the page with the card on it, put it in my pocket, and go on my way.

When I was ready to leave, I politely pointed out to the person that the card was extremely valuable (the condition looked amazing, as if Burdick had just pulled it out of the Goudey envelop, and I estimate the value at the time to be $5-$6K) and that perhaps the museum should make an effort to better protect and safeguard it. The person thanked me very much for my suggestion, and asked I put this information on a note and insert it the album page with the edge sticking out. That way someone would be certain to act on it.

We now flash forward around 6 months when a good friend of mine was reporting to me on his visit to the Burdick collection. When I asked how things went, he said fine, though one unusual thing caught his attention. In the album with the Goudeys in the page with the Lajoie (still dangling from that single strand of adhesive tape) was a handwritten note saying words to the effect "Lajoie card, $5,000 - $6,000 value, please safeguard." That was my original note. So clearly the museum did do something with my note -- they highlighted it so a thief would know which card to steal.

Need I say more why so many cards from the Collection were stolen.

[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.