Is Card Collection A Hobby Or Art?

NEW YORK - To the best knowledge of his surviving friends, Jefferson Burdick never attended a professional baseball game. When he wasn't working as a parts assembler in a Syracuse factory, he spent much of his life in a small apartment devoting his energy to perpetuating what he always called his "hobby."

Burdick was a card collector. The greatest ever. The undisputed father of baseball-card collecting in America.

Yet, until an unprecedented museum opening this week in New York, Burdick's legacy was understood primarily by enthusiasts - although every kid who loves collecting owes Burdick some thanks.

Ever since his death in 1963, his collection of 300,000 postcards, hat cards, tobacco cards, military cards and baseball cards was kept locked away in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, available for viewing only on special request.

That all changed Tuesday, when the museum finally opened a Burdick exhibit.

It includes cards of Honus Wagner and Wee Willie Keeler. Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson. Their cards are all on the museum wall, a few minutes away from the works of Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

The display consists of 80 baseball cards. It is a tiny fraction of Burdick's total baseball collection, which experts say is worth millions of dollars. The cards are mounted in a corridor of the American wing, which was jammed Tuesday for the opening. Yankee great Phil Rizzuto was the guest of honor.

The only card hanging alone on the museum wall is a 1910 Honus Wagner, taken from a Sweet Caporal tobacco series. Wagner, a Hall of Fame shortstop, hated smoking. He demanded that his card be withdrawn from that pioneer release. Only 36 to 40 of the cards are believed to survive.

A mint copy has sold for $250,000. Burdick had one. In 1955, he estimated its value at about 50 bucks. The chance to see it up close was among the reasons the Metropolitan was packed.

"One long-time museum official said this is the most media we've had for an opening since they brought in the Mona Lisa," said Harold Holzer, the Metropolitan's director of public relations.

He wasn't kidding. Curator Elliot Bostwick Davis said Burdick may have saved an "ephemeral" art form, even though the backs of many of his cards were ruined when he pasted them into scrapbooks. Others remain pristine. They are all part of the first permanent exhibit of baseball cards at a major American art museum.

"It's a big deal because it acknowledges baseball cards for what they really are - an American art form," said Bruce Dorskind of Manhattan, who describes himself as "a serious collector."

Frank Nagy, 71, a Detroit collector, is considered the man who elevated baseball cards into a profit-driven passion. But Nagy credits Burdick with establishing the entire hobby, particularly through his 1939 bible of collection, "The American Card Catalog."

"He was the No. 1 guy," said Nagy. "He was bigger than life. Everyone looked up to him."