There are 354 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Casual fans could name maybe 50 on a good day. So much of the list of inductees is a long tail of dead-ball players, former executives, Negro League stars who deserved better, and a handful of players with questionable qualifications who lucked out with their timing.
That last group is where things get interesting for interested collectors, because obscure Hall of Famers provide some of the best values for vintage shoppers. The plaque is the plaque, right? So here are three guys nobody talks about, and a card worth chasing for each one.
Here are some Hall of Famers you haven't heard of (probably) and their best cards.
Tommy McCarthy, OF (1884-1896)
Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1946
Ask a group of hardcore fans to name the weakest player in the Hall, and Tommy McCarthy's name is going to be among the first mentioned. He hit .292 with little power across 13 seasons, numbers that wouldn't even start a Hall of Very Good argument today. McCarthy's reputation is what worked here, as he and Hugh Duffy were known as Boston's "Heavenly Twins" in the early 1890s.
Fans at the time swore McCarthy invented the hit-and-run and perfected the trapped-ball play. Whether he actually did is rather murky, but either way, the Old Timers Committee sent him to Cooperstown in 1946, fifty years after he'd played his last game. Historians have been grumbling about it ever since.
For those wanting to grab McCarthy's best card, the target will be his Old Judge (N172), an issue from Goodwin & Co. Tobacco that ran from 1887 to 1890. These are little sepia studio photos, and McCarthy shows up in a bunch of poses. Old Judge condition is almost always rough, so don't expect anything better than fair condition. However, a beat-up McCarthy is still a 135-year-old card of a Hall of Famer, and it costs a fraction of what his plaque neighbors bring.
Rick Ferrell, C (1929-1947)
Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1984
Ferrell's problem is that he wasn't even the best baseball player in his own family. His brother, Wes, was a pitcher who could genuinely hit, and both the Red Sox and the Guardians have put him in their team Halls of Fame. Cooperstown never called him. It did, however, call Rick in 1984, which pretty much confused everyone.
Not that he was bad. Ferrell caught more American League games than anyone in history at the time he retired. He also made eight All-Star teams, had a strong defensive reputation, and caught every inning of the very first All-Star Game in 1933. That's a nice career, to be sure. It just isn't the typical Hall of Fame trajectory, which is why his name mostly survives on lists of questionable selections.
Ferrell's card is an easy pick: 1933 Goudey #197. Goudey was a Boston gum company that packed one card with each stick, and its 1933 set of 240 hand-tinted color cards basically invented the modern baseball card. It has four different Babe Ruths, two Lou Gehrigs, and just about every star of the era. Ferrell is one of the cheaper Hall of Famers in it, so his card is a realistic way to own a piece of that set without paying star prices.
Jesse Haines, P (1918-1937)
Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1970
Jesse Haines pitched for the Cardinals for 18 years, won 210 games on the strength of his knuckleball, and threw a no-hitter in 1924. His most famous moment came in Game 7 of the 1926 World Series, when the knuckler tore a blister open on his finger, and Haines was forced to leave with the bases loaded.
The guy who replaced him was Grover Cleveland Alexander, who struck out Tony Lazzeri and became an instant legend. Haines got the win but nobody remembers. As for the Hall, he got in via the 1970 Veterans Committee, where his old teammate Frankie Frisch was pulling the strings. Whenever a discussion of Hall of Fame cronyism surfaces, Haines is a central figure, which is about the only place you'll hear his name anymore.
Haines' best card is the 1922 American Caramel (E121), from the Series of 120, where the front lists him as "Jess Haines." No one bothered with his full name, which tells you something about his fame even then. The E121s are thin, unnumbered black-and-white cards, with enough pose and advertising variations to keep pre-war collectors arguing about the checklist even today. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Walter Johnson do the heavy lifting on price, while Haines just sits there on the cheap, waiting for somebody to notice he's a Hall of Famer.
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