Are We Ready for 2019 Topps Heritage?

Are you? Am I? 

I picked up this well-loved, but still cool card of the late Red on Listia the other day, and it dawned on me that this is what the next Heritage set is going to look like. I think I addressed my uncertainty towards my Topps Heritage collecting future in a recent post. We've hit 1970, after all. This set is older than me, but not so old that everyone considers it old. I feel like we've officially crossed a threshold. I'm a huge sucker for anything even slightly "retro", though, so I am not overly optimistic that I will be able to quit this thing cold turkey. I even bought a bunch of packs of Topps Archives last year, even though that set is far less interesting to me than what Topps continues to do well with their Heritage line. It's really one of their only enduring products that I can't find a lot to gripe about.

For a fun exercise, at least for me, I thought I'd stare some cold hard facts in the face and look at how many cards I still need to complete from prior Topps Heritage sets. I am only going to count base cards (no variations!) here. That also means short prints. I'll start with 2008, the first year of Cards on Cards, even though I have the entire 2007 base set (it was a bargain bin staple for awhile.)

• 2008: missing 4 cards
• 2009: missing 2 cards
• 2010: complete
• 2011: complete
• 2012: complete
• 2013: complete
• 2014: complete
• 2015: missing 44 cards
• 2016: missing 47 cards
• 2017: missing 17 cards
• 2018: missing 18 cards

Now, keep in mind that 2008 was particularly weird (short prints were skip-numbered and there were a ton of black back parallels that seemed almost more common than their "normal" counterparts) and there are six sets that included a separate "high series". I also made a decision not to collect the box set only "high series" sets from 2012 to 2014. Those just weren't as fun, although I really consider the Cardinals cards a priority for my team collection. Still, it's no great surprise that all of my incomplete base sets are from the same years that there were both regular and "high series" full-sized sets.

In any case, this wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. I am kind of surprised that I am still missing so many cards from 2015 and 2016, but I feel like I purchased more packs/blasters in the past two years than I did in previous years, when I probably acquired more cards via trade in previous years. I don't think that I necessarily trade less than I used to, but I do feel like I've prioritized my team collection over these sets. I definitely don't feature the cards on the blog as much as I used to.

Speaking of which, if anyone has any extra Heritage cards lying around, let me point you to a list of Heritage want list links. I do need tons and tons of cards from the first six years of sets as well, because I didn't even think about cards back then. Life was so much simpler then.