2023 Topps Heritage: Or Returning to that Same Dry Well....Again....and Again...and...

 

They knew I’d be back.

            Topps those sly devils.

            Sure, they delayed the release.

            There was a part of me that even thought, hell, maybe they won’t even do it this year.

            Maybe they’re done.

            After all, whenever I go to the MLB Store in Midtown, the only product I ever see there in bulk, not moving like the other sets…is Heritage.

            Heritage are the only cards I’ve ever seen discounted at the MLB Store.

            A part of me thought the big boys at Fanatics would look at the cost vs profits, or whatever big boys in finance do, and say, nah, this product ain’t cutting it.

            But….

            Here we are.

            And…

            

            There I go.

            I know I’ve slagged off Heritage here…a lot. If anyone has been on this sports card blogging journey with me, you’d know that I’ve started and stopped putting together every single (minus 2022) Heritage set since I got back into collecting in 2019. I’ve accused Heritage of being disingenuous. A bad representation of the real thing. I’ve bemoaned short print cards. I’ve sworn up and down that I’d never open up another pack of Heritage, and only buy the singles of Pirates and players that I wanted.

            Yet…

            Okay…there’s a reason I’m back at it with Heritage this year and, hopefully, ONLY this year. Two reasons, actually.

            First…it’s my birth year set. Back when I got into collecting, and honestly thought that Heritage was all that I was going to collect, I had this idea that when the 1974 design came around, I’d try to collect it AND the original 1974 set. I started on the original ’74 set back in early 2020. That lasted until I bought a batch of star cards from ComC, and then promptly decided that I wanted them for my PC.

            This also occurred around the time that I began to get frustrated with the short print cards in Heritage.

            To understand my second reason, you’d have to read this blog post right HERE.

            I don’t want to say building 1974 Heritage is some kind of a penance…it isn’t. I don’t waste money.

            But, I guess, for good and bad reasons, I feel very connected to this set.

            And 2023 Heritage is very…Heritagey.

            Yes, Topps gets the design right.

            The company mimics the photography of the original set to an annoying degree.

            There’s the requisite bells and whistles.

    
            That's out if 74 on the Scherzer for you folks into nmbered cards

    
                Some big boys

                And this:

                Usually I trade auto cards away...I'm thinking of keeping this one though.

                Although I know there's not enough Bells and Whistles for a lot of collectors, which is why I’m guessing I was able to find the last few editions of Heritage at a discount.

            There’s confounding stuff like this.

            Now, I understand not everyone is a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. So, let me explain. The first card, Michael Chavis, he was unceremoniously DFA’d by the Pirates in the last few weeks of the 2022 season. He’s currently playing for the Nationals. Card number two, Andrew McCutchen, well, he’s currently back where he belongs in Pittsburgh, working on collecting his 2000^th hit and 300^th home run. Yet he’s in a Brewer uniform. Card number three is of Carlos Santana, Cutch’s current teammate. He finished the year in Seattle. But there he is in computer-enhanced Pittsburgh black and gold.

            This isn’t a big complaint on my part. When I was a kid, if a player changed teams in the off-season, you were almost 100% guaranteed that player would be in the next year’s base set in an outdated uniform. That doesn’t seem to be the case now. Cutch is in a Pirates uniform in this year’s Big-League set. The on-fire Luis Arraez is clad as a Marlin. In this year’s Heritage, Arraez is still a Twin.

            Again, the older collector in me gets it. But the guy looking at this Heritage set wonders why Topps was able to do for one player, but not the other. In Cutch’s case it would’ve been too easy to put him in Pirates black and gold. If the air-brushing machine was broken that day at the Fantatics/Topps corporations, they could’ve simply used an older photo of McCutchen. Not too old…but something from 2016 or 2017, and most of us would not have been the wiser.

            I guess it’s just one of those things.

            Another one of those things, is Topps getting slap happy with the RC card logo.

            I site another example from my Pittsburgh Pirates.

            I believe the popular version of this error comes in the form of a Bobby Witt Jr. card with him in the Kansas City Monarchs uniform. Mr. Witt Jr, a much (if you’re into that thing) sought after rookie card in 2022, gets another shot at rookie fame here in 2023 Heritage.

            One last, the whole ordeal with the missing city on the California (I still call them that) Angels cards.

            As best I know of the situation, and it’s not much, but when Art Moreno bought the then Anaheim Angels, he changed the team’s name to the Los Angeles Angels (or if you’re not into the whole brevity thing the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim). Lawsuits were filed over the name change, and once the suit was dismissed the team changed its name to simply The Angels. No city designation. Therefore, no city designation on Topps cards.

            It makes Angels Heritage cards look awkward.

            That said, it shows that a lot of collectors ignored Archives, because Topps has been doing this for a few years now.

            For me, because of my connection to the design, I’m going to make an honest effort to collect the 2023 Topps Heritage set this year. At least the base set for this and high number. The fact that Topps stopped putting a ton of its marquee players as high numbered short prints in 2021, makes trying to collect short prints less daunting. $2 for a Rodolfo Castro is WAY better than paying $30 for a SP Mike Trout.

            But we’ll see.

            I say a lot of things.

            I make a lot of collecting plans.

            But I also know that there’s a big box in my apartment full of Topps Heritage cards from 2019-2022.

            Anyway….

Lastly, thank you to all of you and your kind words regarding Russell Streur. I'm glad you all enjoyed his writing here and elsewhere.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

Next week: Series 2 is on the table. After that, we’re going hunting for the GRAIL…or maybe the Grail…I haven’t sorted that out yet.