2021 Topps Heritage : A rambling (sort of) review

 

I like Topps Heritage a lot.

            To say anything else on the matter would be a falsehood. I like it when we can take a look back at the past. I like seeing players pictured on cards that aren’t from their era. When I got back into collecting cards, I thought, more than flagship, that Heritage would be the main brand that I collected. Why? Well, to be frank, modern era card designs had left me rather cold. Even before I got back into collecting, I felt this way. My brother got back into collecting years before I did. The nostalgist in me always made it a point to go through whatever cards he had in stacks. The newer flagship cards seemed so foreign from what I was used to growing up. Mostly borderless, or very plain. They seemed a vehicle for photography rather than actual graphic design. Even a non-collector like me knew we were never going back to something as purely beautiful as this.

            Although Topps can. Just look at their online exclusive Brooklyn collection:

And that’s not a bad thing, I guess. One can’t expect things to be like what they were when they were a child. Change is one of life’s only constants. Besides, I like photography. Why not accentuate the photography. In fact, I’d be curious to see what Diane Arbus could’ve done with a 700+ card set. But modern flagship seemed too one-sided to me. It seemed that in the old days (ugh the old days), Topps made it a point to place an emphasis on both the design of the card and the photo. 

            See? Not that hard.

My indifference toward flagship cards changed in 2019. Part of my personal evolution was a willingness, overall, to get back into the hobby and immerse myself in what it had to offer. It also didn’t hurt how I really liked the 2019 Topps flagship design. 

Sure, the emphasis of the flagship brand was still on sharp, action photos. But there was something about the cards that caught me eye. Something nostalgic. I couldn’t pinpoint it at first. But upon further examination…

Still, flagship was minimalist. And I didn’t just want minimalist. In 2019, it came to my attention Topps doing the 1970 card design for that year’s Heritage brand. 

Real 1970 Topps:

The 1970s? Already. Back when I briefly collected again in 2008, they were doing the 1959 design. 

Had that much time past already? 1959 to 1970. 2008 to 2019. Eleven years on both accounts. One look at my old and gray face in the mirror told me that it had to be so. I determined that if I was going to collect flagship cards, I sure as hell was going to collect something that had some semblance of a design to it. I could have the best of both worlds in collecting. The old and the new, featuring the players from this era.

I began buying Topps Heritage with the intent to build the set. But, as I was collating cards, getting ready to put them in binders, I noticed a huge discrepancy between how many cards I was getting from card 1-399, and how few I was getting from card 400-500. Then I remembered something. The reason I stopped collecting Heritage back in 2008 and considered the set a loss. Short prints. Fucking short prints. That intentional scarcity created by card manufactures in the modern era, used to add unwarranted value to a single card and to cause collectors to buy more product than they naturally should’ve had to. Short Prints.

            I didn’t want short print cards in my life, especially when they were part of the actual checklist to the set. I was too old for the chase. I never had patience for the chase, even as a kid. I was a Veruca Salt. I wanted it now, was my motto. As a returning collector, I wanted to buy packs, build sets, and make a PC out of the doubles of players that I liked. Was that too much to ask? By my theory it would take me years to build a Heritage set. Costly years because Topps had a penchant for putting a disproportionate number of star card in the short print run. Fuck that, I thought. I was in mid-ish forties. I’m a functioning alcoholic. I still eat like a twenty-year-old. I didn’t have time for a long-term project.  So, after many packs of 2019 (and, admittedly 2020) Topps Heritage, I decided that I was no longer collecting the brand to build sets. And while I loved the concept, Topps Heritage would simply be a brand I’d buy singles of the cards I wanted.

That brings us to 2021 Topps Heritage. While I’d already determined not to buy tons and tons of Heritage packs in a futile effort to build a 500-card set, there was another factor involved that made my decision seem sounder and more certain. And that was cost. I don’t really need to use this forum to go into 2020 and the ongoing (remember that people this is still ONGOING) Covid-19 pandemic. But for people not familiar with the sports card hobby, let’s just say it didn’t take the financial hit we all assumed it would. Instead, it exploded and expanded, for better and worse. In some instants we watched card prices, especially hobby boxes, double or triple their cost from the previous sport’s season. Even the cost of older boxes of cards skyrocketed in some instances (I’m looking at you 1987 Fleer going from $50 to $150 a box in less than a year). In 2019, I got back in just before this storm hit. I don’t collect to sell, so it seemed economically unsound to buy boxes of seemingly overpriced cards, hoping for maybe a dozen players that I wanted. So, I bought my singles.

Here's a sample of my 2021 Heritage purchases, which reflect the original 1972 Topps design:

I love the original ’72 set. When I was a kid, these were some of my favorites. The design is psychedelic. The font is bold. You could almost picture a Grateful Dead gig being promoted on a 1972 Topps card. D’s brother had given him all of his 1972 cards, and I traded him a fortune to get a card of the lowliest Pittsburgh Pirate. 1972 Topps always makes me think of these guys for some reason. 

    

If there was one card I wanted from 1972 it was this one: 

I’m happy to say that I’ve had it in my collection for a very long time. It was one of the few cards that I kept after I stopped collecting as a teenager.

            2021 Heritage does a good job mimicking the 72 design. It’s a good representation of the teams that were around back then, and they do a respectable job creating designs for the teams that weren’t around in ’72. That is to say they look like they could’ve fit right in. Aside from base cards, 2021 Topps Heritage even does the Boyhood Photo cards and In Action cards that were a feature of the original 1972 set. 

    The In Action cards are here in abundance. Especially cards for the rookies. To me, it seems that Topps focused a lot on In Action cards for the rookies in 2021, because in ’72 rookie cards were a combined two or three players to a card. Here in 2021, it looks like Topps is trying to have the best of both words, stay true to the ’72 rookie card ethos, but provide a vehicle for the game’s top rookies to have their own time to shine in the Heritage set. 

    The short print issue is still there. Cards 400-500 as always. But Topps seemed to have learned a lesson from the past. Most of the marquee players in 2021 Heritage seem to be in the base set, instead of relegated to the final 100 cards. That’s not to say that all of the stars are in the base. If you’re a Zack Greinke, Matt Olson, Whit Merrifield, Ramon Laureano, Blake Snell, or Yordan Alvarez fan, you are still going to have to hunt for their cards or buy them online.

            While I’m satisfied with how I purchased my 2021 Heritage cards (full disclosure I paid maybe a ¼ for the cards I wanted vs trying to find them in pack), there is a downside. The most basic is the sheer thrill of opening new packs and searching the cards, randomly coming across your favorite players. I’m not into autos or relics, but if you are into them then not buying packs means you don’t get to come across them randomly as well. 2021 Topps Heritage also has a nice insert-set for Roberto Clemente. While the cards cost $3 or $4 bucks each online, and I probably wouldn’t have completed the 25-card set anyway; it would’ve been nice to have pulled a card or two or three from a hobby box. But, again, even buying those cards individually is probably the better financial option in the long run.

 Anyway….

 Thanks for reading. Happy Collecting!

 Next Friday: Next week we get Jackie Robinson Day on ACTUAL Jackie Robinson day. A day later on Junk Wax Jay we’re going to take a look at the first black player to ever play for my hometown Pittsburgh Pirates, infielder Curt Roberts.