It's Fine, I Guess

A first (for me) look at 2021 Topps Heritage. 

 

I have to admit that I'm not very excited about this year's Topps Heritage set. I may have mentioned this before, but I think it's my least favorite of the annual Topps brand since the 2013 set which used typical Allen & Ginter card stock to apparently emulate the lighter backs of the original 1964 set. Now that we're a few years into the 1970's, I'm just not that excited about this. It's starting to feel more like the more recent Topps Archives efforts than a true Topps Heritage set.

It also doesn't help that of all of the Topps designs from before my time, so to speak, the 1972 set stands out to me as one of the worst ones. It's just not for me. I'm sure this set evokes nostalgia for people of a certain age, but it does nothing for me. In any case, I still leapt at the chance to buy some blasters (online, because this is 2021.) I bought three blasters in total, saving one for my recent contest winner. I am sure I bought these from a "flipper", but by my calculations, after the cost of shipping is included, the seller only made a total of 41 cents on this transaction. Great job?

I'm not sure that the Boyhood Photos of the Stars treatment works very well when a significant portion of these are dedicated to rookies and younger players. This picture was probably taken on a digital camera in 2005 and not from some sort of ancient time when black and white photos were the only affordable option.

Roberto Clemente gets his own dedicated insert set in this one, which makes the Pirates a somewhat more valuable commodity in group breaks.

The New Age Performers inserts look decent enough, or at least they're appropriate for the set as a whole. They've become even more scarce of a pull in this set, going from a 1:11 ratio to a 1:25.

There were a number of dupes across both blasters, but I was lucky enough to pull a New Age Performers card in each box. Ke'Bryan Hayes is probably underrated as a rookie as far as getting attention goes these days, most likely because he's on a team that has been stripped bare.

It definitely looks like Matt Kemp's team name is Rookies. I have no recollection of him playing for Colorado. It seems like there's a lot of these weird 2020 oddities on the 2021 checklist, as Topps continues to lag far behind reality in terms of producing their sets.

Normally, Topps Heritage is the first set of the year that has players in their new uniforms -- Photoshopped or otherwise. Tyler Naquin should be with the Reds here, but again, this still feels like a 2020 set as much as most of the sets released last year felt like 2019 sets.

Albert Pujols inaction.

Mike Trout is up to something, it seems.

I know that it's surprising that we got this far without a Cardinals card, so here we go. Like most of his teammates, Waino is posing at the Cardinals shared spring training site Roger Dean Stadium, home of the Marlins as well as the Redbirds.
 

My favorite card of the two boxes I opened ended up being this one. Of course, there's a lot of uncertainty with Tatis right now, but it was nice to pull another 1:25 insert card that actually fits into my team collection here. If you're wondering about print runs (I definitely am), it looks like the serial numbered (to 999) Chrome cards jumped from a 1:60 pull in 2020 to a 1:92 pull this year, which suggests that the print run for this set increased by more than 50% this time around. That seems like a lot (and it is), but it's far less than the jump the flagship set made. Just sayin' is all.