Heritage autograph(ed)players list/opinions

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porkchops

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One thing Topps has done with Heritage(baseball)over the years
is to have autos of lesser known and short career players.
Just wondering whether you like or dislike this practice?
As for me,I like it and hope they continue to do it.
My personal favorite(pulled in 07)is a "Jim Derrington" auto.If
you look it up,you'll find a guy who pitched in only 21 games
over 2 seasons and had a 0 and 2 record.He was,however,
the youngest pitcher to ever start a major League game(20th
century)at 16 years of age.
.
Anyway,how do you feel about the players Topps signs for Heritage.
Ken
 
I must say that I like it as well. It is unbelievable how stacked the checklists were initially but it makes no sense for topps to spend more money for the stars to sign for heritage. I like the variety but not having to pay more for a common player because he is from the heritage product.
 
If I bought the packs, I'd like to get a little better selection of player. However, if having commons make it easier to pull an auto and there are still some stars, that would be OK. Otherwise just stacking the product with players only a team collector could care about is a bad idea in my mind.

I generally stay away from true commons unless there is a reason to go after one. Maybe the player did some little significant thing or set an obscure record and then I may track down a signature. The big exception for me is Dodgers. I will take ANY Dodger auto. Now with that said, a player has to be pretty plain to reach true common status in my book.
 
I like the obscure autos because it's a real surprise when you pull one. Last year the only Topps Heritage auto I pulled was Justin Masterson, which I promptly traded. Of course he was later traded to Cleveland, so I kind of wish I had kept it. In 2008 I pulled a Herb Plews (Senators infielder) and a red auto of J.W. Porter (Senators catcher.) I held onto those because they're cool variations of actual cards from the 1959 set.
I just remembered I also pulled a redemption for a game used/auto from Bob Rush last year, but I'm still waiting for that.
 
When I was searching for All Star game players for my autograph collection, I was running into large lists of 3x5s and cards, many of whom were players from the 20s-40s that I had not heard of. It was fun to discover names like Willis Hudlin (1926-1944) and Roger Cramer (1929-1948) for example. Now these were not HOFers, but they had decent careers. They would be known if they played today based on their stats. Hudlin had (5) 15+ win seasons, although his best years were before the ASG began in 1933 and was never an all star. Cramer had 2700+ hits, including (3) 200+ hit seasons and was a 5 time all star. Not bad for players who are not household names. Now, to discover hidden gems like those in a Heritage auto release would be outstanding, but those examples were before Topps. Maybe even pulling someone like Gus Triandos or Jim Maloney, who had decent, yet less well known careers would be worth finding. I'm sure we could come up with a great list of 50s and 60s players who have never appeared in a signature set that would make a great pool of players people would want to collect.

However, and no offense to you guys who enjoyed your Porters and Derringtons, but those guys just do absolutely nothing for me. I don't need HOFers to keep me interested, but I need a little more than a "3 MLB at bats" or "3-11 record over 4 years" kind of guy signing. I have to assume those players were cheap to get and still alive to fit the bill for the Heritage sets, although so many other players could have likely been used.

Funny, I actually have a Porter auto, but it's on a unique card, hence the reason I picked it up. It's on a 1955 Topps Double Header. 124 hits and a .228 average over 6 years....YAWN!

I guess the one real positive about this is that these guys probably don't have too many autograph cards out there for those who would like to add them and otherwise would only be found on vintage TTMs or on the old Topps archive/Bowman reprint cards.
 
I read(somewhere)that the year Topps happens to be doing,
is also the last year that these players were carded.
One of the ones I pulled this year was Ned Garver,not too
bad a pitcher.
Ken
 
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