Heritage Surprises

Some unexpected surprises from recent purchases. 

I hit up the local card show a little over a week ago and spent most of my time with my head down at the quarter boxes, snagging some stuff for myself and a few people I owed stuff to. My theme for the year, hopefully, is to avoid unnecessary purchases whenever possible. However, there's no way I can pass up Retail Guy's table, which led me to buying two 2015 Heritage blasters at a deeply discounted rate of $12 apiece.

The first box I opened was a High Numbers box. It was easy to talk myself into these purchases because they're from sets I'm actively collecting. The High Numbers box was the most frustrating from a set collecting standpoint as I already had every single non-SP base card and insert card in each pack, instantly growing my pile of dupes past an already unacceptable level. This set is very small compared to most Topps sets configured this way, and with modern collation being what it is, once you see a familiar card in a pack you know that the whole thing is probably going to be Dupe City.

Still, I can't complain, because look at this thing! It's rare enough to snag a great hit for my personal collection randomly out of a pack, but considering Cepeda's relatively short time (3 seasons) with St. Louis versus the rest of his long career, it's a wonder that this exists at all. I love it. I also did get to knock off 3 short print cards from my want list, including the Kris Bryant card that essentially paid for the box itself.

Blaster number two was from the regular (low? series) Heritage set, where I was able to knock off a couple dozen needs from my list. Cool. Even better, I pulled an on-card autograph of an obscure pitcher from the '60s in Gordon Richardson. A quick Google search tells me that the original 1966 version of this card was Richardson's only MLB card. I usually hang on to any interesting Topps Heritage cards even if I don't actively go after stuff like this if it doesn't fit my mostly Cardinals-centric needs, but I could imagine trading this for another similar card if it made sense.

Finally, you may be wondering about the Nolan Ryan card at the top of the post, which uses the 1960 Topps design that was featured in the 2009 Topps Heritage product. It came to me out of another one of those $4.99 drug store repack boxes that I can't keep myself from buying even though they're mostly recycled Gary Pettis cards. This card, confusingly enough, sports a 2010 copyright... not to mention the fact that Ryan only turned 13 in 1960. It turns out that this is another National promo, similar to some Mantle stuff I found recently in the 2010 design. I am going to hang on to this as well, but I don't really have a good reason why.