Determining authenticity of Non-star player/common player bats

[markf31]

I've been debating starting up with a side project of collecting vintage Pittsburgh Pirate game used bats, mainly staying away from the stars and HOFers with this aspect of my collection and focusing on gamers from Non-star players.

So my question then is how do you make an informed decision on these types of bats since for the most part shipping records, order records or any other information for many of these players will never have been researched by anyone.

Take for example Charlie Sands who played 28 games for the 1971 Pirates, spent most of the 1971 and 1972 season on the Pirates roster, and played in only 93 total games over a 6 year MLB career.

Now my initial thought was if I find a Charlie Sands LS bat with labels matching his time in the majors and/or with the pirates, and the bat shows signs of game use such as ball marks, tar, cleat marks, that I would ok assuming that it’s a genuine Sands gamer knowing that the chances of LS releasing any additional Charlie Sands bats to anyone else or any other team is slim to none.

Are my assumptions accurate? Does anyone have any other thoughts?