To follow up on our thread from last year, I recently went through my cards and pulled out the two with the ornate "JB" stamp. One E26 and one E50 (pictured with the kinney leader card from the initial thread).

Anyone else find some of these hidden in their collection?



Rob

from a Prang Album Card - Autumn Leaves Part 1
http://imgur.com/TDFI6

There were a number of theories offered in the lst thread on this subject. One of which was that these cards were extras and sold or given away at the museum. This makes the most sense to me. I haven't gone through the old thread but are all the N cards stamped with the round variety stamp and all the T (and E)card stamps the J. Burdick or JB symbol?

The museum and gift of burdick stamps obviously appear to have been part of the collection.

I don't have a good reason besides the lack of the other stamps, but I feel like the cards with the other ornate stamp, which seem to be a bit more prevalent, were just cards that were part of his accumulation/collection. Maybe these cards were traded/circulated around the hobby before he gave his collection to the MET.

Rob

It seems to me that the easiest way to resolve the questions over the round-stamped Met cards would be to contact the curators of the print department at the Met and inquire as to whether any of the Burdick gifted cards were ever deaccessioned. I suspect the answer is "no" and that the cards stamped with the Met stamp did not reach the market legitimately.

Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc

Hey All!

I am working on a T58 fish master set and saw a lot on ebay. I did not need any of the fish but barely noticed a stamp on one of the backs. I bought the lot just to check out the stamp. I waited till it came in today to verify the JB Stamp!

Awesome Cliff!

Thanks for sharing. Nice to see another one.

Rob

Just added this one:



And once posted this at www.Net54baseball.com:

Previously posted some of this before, but it seems apt...

In my endless quest for all signed pre-war cards, I recently discovered a T201 Mecca double-folder that had been beautifully signed by its subject Lefty Leifield. While I have come across a few of these in my endless searching and already own one of the finest examples this particular autographed T201 Leifield carries a very special provenance in addition to the players signature. Indeed, this particular tobacco card was once owned by none other than the Godfather of baseball cards himself, Jefferson Burdick. How do I know this? Because Mr. Burdick stamped his name right on the back not once, but twice.



Even the most casual collector of vintage baseball cards knows who Jefferson Burdick is. That he was a trading and baseball card collector. That he cataloged his cards in the American Card Catalog (ACC), which is still used today. For instance, the T206 set received its name from its designation in the ACC. And Burdicks collection is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where a small part of his collection is always on display in the American Wing.

Sadly a small amount of Burdicks ultimate collection has fallen victim to theft. We sometimes see evidence of this when cards surface in the market with stamps identifying them as gifts of Burdick and property of the Met. Two such examples are set forth below:





However, despite the efforts of unscrupulous card thieves, there is no doubt that the bulk of Burdicks enormous hoard is firmly a part of the Mets permanent collection.

But, every card collector worth his salt knows that hoarding is only part of the fun. The moment you stop collecting may signal a final stage in the collecting journey but what about all of those cards that your acquired and then sold or traded along the way? Are they any less part of your collection when the inevitable move comes? Collectors love to buy, sell and trade. And we know that Burdick was at least trading cards by the mid-1930s. In his first Card Collectors Bulletin (CCB) on January 1, 1937, Burdick listed the first Collectors Directory of known card collectors. 15 of the earliest known collectors, including their specific collecting interests, was on page 1:



It is also well known that Burdick would share and trade cards with these collectors. For example, Lionel Carter received his 1933 Goudey Lajoie from Burdick when Burdick learned that Carter was unable to locate one for his collection. And many old-time collectors would stamp their names on the backs of their cards, oftentimes so that the cards would not get inadvertently comingled with the collections of others. Thus, a collector would send a stack of cards to another collector for a potential trade, without fear that he would not receive his untraded or unsold cards back.

It appears that Burdick did just that. As you can see on this broad array of vintage cardboard, Burdick routinely stamped his name on cards, whether the subjects were boxers, Olympians or great explorers.



Skeptics may say that anyone can stamp J. Burdick or Jeff B. on the back of a trade card. But the E80 Jack Johnson also contains an ornate B, which at least one reputable collector identified on the back of another card when he was researching Burdicks collection at the Met. This B marker provides a significant anchor of provenance, for on the Johnson we also see the stamp Jeff B. which is also on the Sheppard and Leifield. And the Sheppard and Leifield also have the same Jeff Burdick. stamp, which is also on the Lockwood. There is little doubt that all of these cards come from the same collection, and that they were at one point in time a part of Jefferson Burdicks active or less permanent, pre-donation collection.

Today a collector would be ill-advised to stamp his own name or initials on the back of his antique baseball cards. But consider that Burdick passed away in 1963, and that these cards have changed hands any number of times before and since. Burdick may have only held these cards in his possession for a brief period of time. But, because he stamped them, Burdicks association with these cards endures for as long as they remain collectibles. We constantly celebrate Burdicks legacy when we collect baseball cards. Because Burdick stamped these cards, we are able to feel a little closer to that history.

A copy of George Vrecheks fantastic article about the Burdick stamp on the T218 Sheppard is available here:

[urlhttp://www.oldbaseball.com/refs/Burdick_Warshaw_Dunshee_Cards.pdf[/url]



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Visithttp://www.t206collector.com for Net54 T206 archive, signed deadball card galleries, articles and more!

Fantastic article......thanks for sharing that....

anyone seen the dancing bear stamp before?

Have not seen any other bears Cliff, neat

I read the article for a second time and enjoyed it but....

I am having some trouble with the loose logic used to determine the cards signed JB are ones he traded while the ones that have gift of the JR Burdick are ones that were stolen. (unscrupulous thieves)

I'm still curious why the "JB" stamp is only found (so far) on T & E cards, while the "gift of JR" stamp is only found on N cards. Surely Burdick's trading would not have been limited to only T & E cards right? Why have we not seen the JB stamp on any of the N cards? We saw a Prang card with the gift of JR stamped on it. Is it possible pre-1900 cards got one stamp, post 1900 the other stamp? Why should we assume the ones marked as a gift of JR are stolen - it's been theroized many times on previous threads that these could have been given out or sold at the Met's gift shop, this reasoning seems more or as likely as thieves.

Good article but really has done little to move the bar one way or another in Burdick stamp debate.

I thought the Burdick collection that was donated to the Met consisted of cards glued to pages in a binder. It doesn't make sense that they could be stamped on the backs. Therefore it makes sense that these may be "extras" that the museum could distribute as they see fit.

That's not a bear, it's a happy Bigfoot ... happy because he just scored a bunch of N tobacco cards for his collection.

I wonder if the stamped cards were given to potential donors. That could be one avenue of distribution on these. Also, aren't some Burdick collection cards stored in boxes? Thought I had seen that somewhere.

It's possible that the purple stamps (ornate JB and Jeff B) were cards that were stamped in his collection before he donated them. These were probably stamped by JB himself.

The met stamps might've been stamped at the beginning of his long process of donating which might explain why you see them only on the earlier cards. He (or they) might've have stopped stamping them somewhere along the way. Or, maybe they were for sale like somebody mentioned.

Rob

If you look at the "N" binders at the Met, they are far better organized, tabbed and labeled than those of later cards. My suspicion is that as he realized what a project it was, he tried to get the work done rather than spending extra energy tabbing and so forth. I'd also wonder whether the Met-stamped ones are missing from albums or are discards that he decided not to put into the albums. Personally, I'd be worried about owning them without clarity from the Met on whether they are stolen goods.

Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc

Now we have the ORNATE B on some N cards....



Here is another picture from the met showing the circular stamp as well.

Those images from the Met are really interesting. The stamps are not reversed, which is what I would expect if they were wet transfers from the backs of cards, and the JB stamps appear to be directly applied to the albums themselves. Does the stamp on the album page at every space mean that Burdick removed an item from the space and stamped it to show that he did it?

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