My Top 50 Players On Cardboard-#48 Dave Winfield

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard 
#48
Dave Winfield

1974 Topps Dave Winfield RC

Hobby Impact-

I have never been super huge on Winfield cards, but he's always had a pretty decent following.  I think much of his what drives his card values is owed to his Yankee years, but I know a few that dig the old 70s Padres cards.  He's also pretty legendary around Minnesota and I am surprised he was not referenced in Fargo.  Almost every "good" Winfield card in my collection is a Padres card.  While I am personally not invested very deep with Winfield cards, he seems to frequently pop up in important sets and is a good and willing signer.  He's appeared recently in high end Topps products like Triple Threads and Topps Sterling as a signer, but also appeared in some really important sets in the late 90s and early 2000s as a Yankee including the Greats of the Game releases, UD Retro, and Topps Archives.  

On the Field Impact-

He is obviously a Hall of Famer, but I consider him a compiler.  He's got some nice numbers and good seasons.  He hit more than thirty home runs a few years in the early eighties when that was a feat.  Really, at the end of his career his numbers look pretty good.  Winfield won a World Series with the Blue Jays in 1992 as the team's DH.  All-Star games, check.  Gold Gloves, check.  Sounds good.  

Favorite Card-

Like many players, Winfield bounced around quite a bit at the end of his career making appearances for the Angels, Blue Jays, Twins, and Indians.  While some of those years were still productive, the last year with the Twins and the season with the Indians was not pretty.  Luckily, in 1993 Upper Deck put out a cool insert set of some older players in the 1993 Upper Deck base set, who at the time were in some serious decline.  As a Cardinals fan, it was nice to see a young Ozzie Smith instead of the old guy who could not throw the ball to first base anymore.  

1993 Upper Deck Then & Now Dave Winfield 

Upper Deck also treated us with a Dave Winfield in the set complete with the old Padres unis and cool 70s sideburns.  The background is a hologram which shows Winfield as a Blue Jay.  It was hard to get the hologram part to scan, but he can kind of see the picture of Winfield swinging on the right hand side of the card.