Doing This (High) Heritage Thing Again

Bring on the end of season sets with my first 2018 Heritage High Number blaster. 

I haven't been able to find any of this stuff in stores, so I finally took to Amazon to get my first look at the extension of the 2018 Topps Heritage set. I always appreciate more Heritage cards to collect, in theory, but it was a bit of a relief when this product was shelved for a few years. After a few years in a boxed set format, the packs returned in full force back in 2015 and haven't relented since.

Here's my standard disclaimer that often gets ignored. This is the only card you'll see in this post that is actually available for trade. Should I start throwing a fancy little sticker on the "for trade" card photos in my posts? I wish I had Photoshop skills, because that kind of sounds like a cool idea. This is one of those Chrome Refractor parallels that have no business appearing in a set like this, but are cool enough for player and team collectors at least.

I think the insert sets are the same as the past few years, which means Topps flips "Then & Now" to become "Now & Then" and only features a single, current player.

My first Cardinal card of the box was of a player who had a truly dreadful debut in the Birds on the Bat. Holland was signed out of desperation (really, on both sides) as St. Louis had some beat up players in the bullpen in spring and Holland didn't have a job, despite leading the league in saves the previous year. He essentially skipped out on spring training altogether and was a disaster on the mound. He would up in Washington before the season was out during the Cardinals July Purge.

Corey Kluber is not doing a lot to disprove that he's a robot here.

Rookie Performers are among the most popular inserts in this set year after year (just look at the prices for those Kershaw cards from 2008!) This gets an appropriately cheesy late '60s design.

I got Ohtani's card out of the way right off the bat, which is good. These cards are cheap right now, but this could've easily turned into one of those things that no one wants to trade me down the road.

Here's a former Cardinal who became a prominent reliever for the Rockies. He was on the mound for their Wild Card win last night (gave up a run, but kept them in the game?)

Deckle Edge inserts continue in the High Number series. I was a bit surprised at getting Marte here, as he's neither a traded player nor a rookie.

As with the other Cardinals I pulled, this goes into my team collection, meaning I'll need a second copy.

Tyson Ross's second stint with the Padres was abbreviated. He ended up as a long man in the Cardinals bullpen by season's end.

Yairo (pronounced like how awful people mispronounce gyros) was one of the big surprises of the Stephen Piscotty offseason trade, as he had a fine season plugging in holes in the Cardinals lineup while others were injured. I'm not sure he belongs in the infield, though. The other surprise of that trade has to be Nick Martini, Oakland's lead-off hitter in tonight's AL Wild Card game. (Sorry, A's.)

We finish off the Heritage Year much like the way we started it, with a Randal Grichuk card.