Baseball Card Partying like it's 1969.
Topps Heritage has landed, which means it's a new baseball card year for me, now that I'm trying my best to ignore the flagship set. I was a little hesitant to dive right in this year, as Ohtani-mania is threatening to devour everything in its path. Topps was apparently willing to bend the rules as far as they can possibly go to include the Angels new international signee into this set, despite not yet achieving official "RC" status. Personally, I will continue to be skeptical of any player until he's actually accrued some MLB time.
I haven't been able to find any blasters yet, but I did pick up two hanger packs and a (retail) jumbo pack. Let's take a look at some of the cards I pulled.
Stats! Oh, glorious stats on the back! Suck it, Regular Topps.
I always look forward to the Baseball Flashbacks inserts, and this looks like a good design despite the baby blue ribbon taking up a lot of space.
Checklists are a thing now, so that's cool, I guess. I am sure this falls in line with the 1969 set, although I know at times they've done these as unnumbered filler cards and other times they've been left out altogether. I guess the fact that the card includes a small player photo makes these more crucial.
100 short prints to collect, you guys! Can I do it? (It's doubtful.)
The Blue Jays are quickly turning into the ex-Cardinals, which is appropriate for another bird team. I don't mind as I've always liked the Blue Jays a bit. Grichik joins Jaime Garcia (2008-2016), Aledmys Diaz and now Seung-hwan Oh in Toronto. Or he will, I guess, when Spring Training is done.
Rhys Hoskins is one of the biggest rookie names. This is some sort of Target exclusive insert, and I have no idea what it's based on. It's very yellow, which is pretty fun.
It won't be long before Topps Heritage leaves the Mad Men era, and the News Flashbacks probably won't be so fun anymore.
These All-Stars cards look great.
This was in the jumbo pack, which was the first thing that I opened, and I originally blew this off as some sort of one-per-pack gold stamped nonsense parallel. Well, it turns out that these things only have a print run of 25 per copy. Still, I feel like these would be worth more to people if they were numbered. I could probably be convinced to part with this card for the right deal, although I'm not sure what the market is for rare cards of a middle reliever.
Matt Harvey is a short print guy, and it's starting to feel like his career may be short printed.
Luis Perdomo is another SP. He was a Cardinals product that was lost in a Rule V draft if I'm not mistaken.
Both hanger packs had the Target exclusive card in them.
We're now a few years removed from any Cardinals leading the league in anything notable, which kind of bums me out.
These newspaper style World Series cards are pretty great. I was first exposed to them by way of the early '00s Topps Archives sets. George Springer is definitely one of the players I would collect if I had more time and effort to focus on such things.
I actually picked up two copies of the Rhys Hoskins (and some other guy) Rookie Stars card. Yes, there were dupes, even though I only bought 3 things (and at the same store, no less.)
Kolten Wong is ready for the new season!
The yellow cards are apparently based on "transogram" things (?) from '69 that were similar to Hostess cards in that there were 3 to a box for kids to cut out.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I poked around with a 1969 search on TCDB but totally missed this.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewSet.cfm/sid/57961/1969-Transogram-Statues-Cards-
Digging into this more, apparently there was a 3 pack of proto "Starting Lineup"-type figurines that came with 3 cards on the box you could cut out. Kind of an obscure thing to ape a design from, but whatever.
ReplyDeleteI really like the all-star cards as well. The base cards are so-so to me but that is every year. Good post and good cards even if they were Cardinal heavy. :)
ReplyDelete