Review: 2014 Topps Heritage Baseball

Ever since returning to the Hobby a few years ago I’ve been constantly on the search for a set to collect. My fickle and ever-changing moods have made this a far more difficult task that it’s needed to be, but a couple of years ago I set my sights on a specific set-building goal.

1965 Topps Baseball is my favourite vintage set from the 60’s. I can’t really put my finger on why this is, it just think that it’s one of the intangible things that is, simply because it is! I think that there are better looking vintage sets out there – 1957 Topps being top of my list (somewhat controversially, maybe) – but from the 60’s the ’65 set has always stood out.

So when I knew that we were only a couple of years away from Heritage’s take on the ’65 set I decided that was the one I was going to aim for. It looked as if I was finally ready to take on the Heritage challenge, with its 425 card base set and several dozen SPs!! Bring it on!!

Now, I may have told you before that I have a very limited budget for cards. This is one of the things that’s always frustrated me about being a baseball card fan, this inability to buy a constant stream of up to date product! So with a huge amount of patience I started putting away my pennies from various eBay sales and started stockpiling my Heritage fund. About a month before the official release date I pre-ordered two boxes off eBay and then settled down to wait for the release itself… and wait… and wait… and wait!

When the product was delayed it didn’t go down too well with Patricia Bates’ favourite son, but eventually the boxes did arrive on my doorstep… Heritage Day was finally here!!

This was a bit of a first for me as I don’t recall ever opening more than one box of the same product in the same sitting (negligible budget, as I said), so I was going to make a big deal out of it – milk it for all it was worth. You know? Make the moment last… Stretch it out as looooonnngg as I could… Savour every… single… moment…

15 minutes after starting, I’d finished! Sigh…

Here’s a breakdown of what I got from the two boxes –

Box toppers : 2 Advertising Panels (not opened yet)

Base (1-425) : 233/425
High number SPs (426-500) : 16/75. No dupes
Action Image Variation SPs : 3 – Bryce Harper, Derek Jeter, Matt Kemp
Logo Variation SPs : 0
Chrome Parallel (#’d/999) : 4 – Giancarlo Stanton, Hisashi Iwakuma, Yadi Molina, Patrick Corbin
Chrome Refractor Parallels (#’d/565) : 1 – Alfonso Soriano
Black Chrome Refractor Parallels (#’d/65) : 1 – Michael Wacha

Black Back : 1 – John Danks
New Age Performers Inserts : 6/20. 0 dupes
Then and Now Inserts : 4/10. 0 dupes
Baseball Flashbacks Inserts : 4/10. 0 dupes
News Flashbacks Inserts : 4/10. 0 dupes
1st Draft Inserts : 2/4. 2 dupes (both the Johnny Bench’s)
Hits : Clubhouse Collections – Bryce Harper, Wilin Rosario

In terms of the hits I’d say I punched well above my weight with some nice Action variations; a black refractor that any Cards fan would be happy to own; a very rare black back parallel and an awesome Club House collection jersey card of Mr Bryce Harper! Was I happy with those inserts?? That’s a clown question bro!!

Here’s a better look at some of the goodies –

As I said, VERY happy with the inserts!! But I was never in this for the inserts to be honest… Nope, for me this was all about the set building! Get as many base as I could and then pick up the rest through trades and such-like. It’s helped a lot that there’s been a pretty high level of interest for this set over here amongst my fellow UK-based collectors, so it looked as if things should be pretty straightforward!

Shouldn’t they?

Well take a look at this next picture!

The stack on the right are the unique base cards while the stack on the left are the duplicate base cards! 147 base dupes to 233 unique base! Can you maybe see where I’m heading with this?

I’ll come straight out and say that I love the product, nothing changes there. Great fun to open and a great range of inserts! Lovely looking cards and a decent quality card stock! But those dupes?? Man… those dupes!!

I never laboured under any illusion that two boxes would have netted me a full 425 card base set, but 233 unique base?? Come on!! That’s only just over half!! (54.8% if you wanted to be specific). I managed to pull the same cards at a ratio of almost 2 dupes to every 3 unique base! 2:3!!! Is that right? Is it acceptable from just two ‘random’ boxes?? My friend from north of the border, Glenn Codere, opened two boxes of Heritage just before me and ended up with 79.3% of the 425-card base set! Now that’s more like it and what I’d have liked to have seen myself.

However I guess the boxes weren’t that random after all. I went back over my packs and noticed that some of them were almost identical, except for the inserts. Same seller and I assume (although I haven’t verified) the same case! So what happened?!?! How did I manage to get cursed with such lousy collation?

I immediately went to my go-to-guy on Twitter, case-breaker extraordinaire Mr Brent Williams, who verified that this can be quite a common occurrence, with roughly every three boxes often being the same in terms of content. Another Twitter user advised that Topps don’t randomize their packing sequence, so that when dupes come they come in droves! So maybe it was just my bad luck that I ended up with two boxes that had similar content? If it happens, it happens, but I can’t help thinking that I somehow got the raw deal here.

The thing is boxes of baseball cards aren’t cheap these days. I’d saved for a good while, letting other desirable cards that I would happily have picked up just pass me by… Steadily building up the excitement for the release of this years Heritage! Only to be faced with a high number of dupes that I wouldn’t have expected to get from such a small sample of packs!

The aftermath of breaking down these two boxes has pretty much soured my whole experience with this product. I’m incredibly wary about buying another box, just to chance my hand at filling the gaps. In some ways the enthusiasm I’ve had for 2014 Heritage over the last couple of years has all but evaporated and has left me with a really bitter taste in my mouth. Yeah, I guess I was just unlucky and yeah, maybe I should quit bitching about it and appreciate the cool inserts that I pulled. But as I said earlier, it was never about the inserts in the first place. It was always about the base, about the set itself, and in that area Heritage has come up severely lacking!

Please Topps, do something about the way those boxes get packed to avoid something like this happening to other collectors. To get this level of duplication from just two boxes is woefully unacceptable and simply shouldn’t happen. It creates bad feeling and adversely affects those individuals who invest their hard-earned time and money into you and the Hobby!

I know that it’s too late now but I really wish I’d held off the this year’s Gypsy Queen, although potentially the same thing could have happened there too I guess! The worst thing is it looks as if I won’t be going back to Heritage again anytime soon, and to me that’s a lot sadder then any stack of dupes ever will be!

A Case Breaker’s (Half) Year in Review

If you have followed this blog since its inception in September last year (thank you very much), or if you’re a follower of the Baseball card Hobby on Twitter, a gentleman who goes by the name of Brent Williams shouldn’t be too much of a stranger to you.

Brent has been a card collector for well over 25 years and a seller/trader for over 15 years! He’s become renowned for the huge volume of product that he gets hold of on a yearly basis, which he breaks down and sells on to his vast army of loyal customers. Each new product that Topps releases is usually a pretty exciting time as, thanks to Brent, you get to see things through the eyes of a gen-u-ine case breaker!

The volume of cases that Brent opens is usually far beyond what us mere mortals can afford so it’s really fascinating to gain his insight into a side of the Hobby that most of us aren’t ever privy to. If any of you are on Twitter and don’t already follow Brent then I urge you to do so now – @brentandbecca

One of the other things that I like about Brent is that he always (to me at least) stands out as a voice of reason in what’s sometimes a divisive and frustrating hobby. In an environment where company and card bashing is often rife, I know that I can always read what Brent writes and feel that there’s a carefully thought through and rational point behind it. Like the rest of us Brent is incredibly passionate about what he does, from both a collecting and selling standpoint, but he doesn’t tend to let that passion cloud his judgement when it comes to writing about and discussing the Hobby we all know and love!

He’s always been helpful to me when discussing aspects of the Hobby that I didn’t fully appreciate, especially in The Wax Fantastic’s earlier days, and for that I’m forever grateful.

Brent also writes semi-regularly for Ryan over at The Cardboard Connection, and if you’re wondering where I was going with the ‘Brent Williams Appreciation Piece’ above then it’s primarily to draw your attention to his latest article which looks at Brent’s thoughts on what he’s been opening so far in 2013, and what he expects from the second half of the year!

He also discusses ‘The Power of Puig’ (I reckon I should get that trademarked).

As you might expect it’s a really interesting piece so please go and give it a read –

2013 Topps Baseball Cards Mid-Year Review: A Case Breaker’s Take

Thanks for taking the time!!

The 2013 Topps Heritage Baseball Review Hub

2013 Topps Heritage has been live for a week now and I’ve been going into ‘Google-frenzy’ over the last couple of days, trying to find reviews on the product, to gauge what popular opinion is as to whether the set is a ‘hit’ or a ‘miss’.

I don’t know whether you’ve done this yourself but looking for card reviews can be a bit of a thankless task sometimes, as they tend to be scattered to all corners of the web.

It’s incredibly rare for me to get hold of new wax as soon as it’s released (usually because of the high cost in getting a box over to the UK) so expecting a review from my good self as soon as a new set hits the streets is pretty much a waste of time. And then I thought to myself – “Hold on a second, Andy” (my internal monologues often go like this) “Wouldn’t it be ideal if there was a single point, or ‘Hub’, where the links to new product reviews could all be brought together to make life easier for collectors who were endlessly scouring the internet for that very thing?”

You can see where this is going, right??

So, without further ado, I bring you the first ‘Review Hub’ for Baseball card releases, starting with 2013 Topps Heritage.

The idea is – if you see any reviews out there that aren’t included then please let me know by either leaving a comment against this post or via Twitter @TheWaxFantastic, and I’ll include the link here! I’ll set one of these up when each Baseball card product gets released so hopefully it will save on people’s time searching for the damn things in the first place. The same thing applies if you’ve written one yourself and feel it should be included – just send me the details!!

I’ll also try and include one of Chris Justice’s video breaks from YouTube just to give you an idea what the cards look like.

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Beckett Media

Heritage King’s Blog Page

Dime Boxes

Card Anathema

Card Junk

The Diabetic Card & Comic Geek

The Pack Gambler

Talking Chop

Sports Collector

Sports Card Collectors

Lifetime Topps Project

9 Inning Know It All

Gem Mint

Trade Retreat

Full Spectrum Baseball

Jim’s Baseball Cards

My Cardboard Mistress

The Pursuit of 80’s(ness)

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The Cards Infinity Video Break (starring Chris Justice)

Please let me know if you ever come across a dead link and I’ll get it removed!!

Enjoy!!

Best Set Ever?

Just before Christmas I wrote a piece called ‘The True Nature of Card Collecting‘, in which I gave my reaction to an article written by Braves fan and fellow blogger, Chris Mays. Click on the link and have a read… It’s a great little post, even if I do say so myself… Go on… You know you want to!

Well, another of Chris’ recent articles has convinced me to put fingers to keyboard once more.

Obviously, I’m slightly concerned that Chris is becoming my blogging ‘muse’ (and Chris, if you’re reading this at any point, I’m sure you’re probably worried to), but bear with me… I’m sure its just a phase 🙂

In his most recent article entitled Chipper Jones and Topps Heritage in 2013 published on Talking Chop, a Braves ‘fansite’ on SB Nation, Chris divides his thoughts along two separate lines. The first looks at the possibility of Braves legend, Chipper Jones (despite recently retiring from Baseball), appearing in some of the early Topps releases this year (and if it makes any difference Chris, I don’t think he will either… shame), while the second part looks at how Topps Heritage appears to have lost its way over the last few years. The issues with Heritage are for another time and another post…

The thing that intrigued me the most though were Chris’ musings on Topps Heritage as a brand, which in turn got me thinking about a set that I’d passed over at the time and have constantly considered going back to over… the inaugural Topps Heritage set from 2001!

Up to 2001 I’d never had much interest in vintage Baseball cards. Sure I was well aware of the significance of certain cards, the ’52 Mantle stands out as an obvious one, but vintage had never quite done it for me.

… Until 2001 Topps Heritage came along! Click on this link for the relevant entry in Baseballcardpedia for more details on this set!

I distinctly remember how popular this set was at the time and the look and feel of the cards made me start to invest more of my time (and cash) into researching (and purchasing) vintage Baseball! From there I was hooked and my love of cards, and the history of the game, grew even more! Up until I took a self-imposed exile from collecting due to the birth of my first daughter, and even after my return to the Hobby just over a couple of years ago, vintage was always at the forefront of my mind!

The problem here is that 2001 Topps Heritage did such a good job of turning me onto vintage cards, that I ended up overlooking the Heritage set itself altogether!

It’s now entered into current Baseball card folklore as one of the most important sets in the modern era, even voted ‘Product of the Decade’ by Beckett Media back in 2009!

Having read Chris’s article and some of the information on Baseballcardpedia I’m absolutely amazed and completely unaware of the great job that Topps did with this set. The attention to detail, down to the number of cards, the red and black backs, the SPs, and so on, is just outstanding, and it’s easy to see why this set is held in such high regard over a decade on!

I love the ‘romantic’ notion that this release may have saved the art of set building and collecting! This set is just THAT important!!

I think it’s a collectors dream in the purest sense! Free from the multitude of gimmicks that plague a number of today’s releases (even the modern Heritage releases), the 2001 Topps Heritage is the ‘Gold Standard’ to which all sets should aspire to from a collecting viewpoint!

You know, I may just be forced to pick a few singles up off eBay… Just to see where it might lead!

Personally I think it’s a Pujols RC short of being the ‘Best Set Ever’ in my eyes, but hey, what the hell do I know!!

Blogging About Vintage Baseball

In my eternal quest to find something interesting and relevant to say about our great Hobby it’s often good to know that there are hundreds of other like-minded individuals who are trying to do the very same.

Keeping abreast of other blogs will often provide plenty of interesting food-for-thought, sometimes stirring up the imagination enough for you to put a comment in response to one of their pieces, or even provide enough of a reaction that you find  it deserves a post of your own!!

This exact thing happened yesterday while I was reading a post written by Craig from Texas in his own blog entitled ‘My Baseball Card Blog‘!! Just click on the link to get to his site. I’m sure you could spend a few moments of your time and it makes a great read if you have any interest in Vintage Topps Baseball cards.

Craig’s goal is to complete ALL the Topps Baseball card sets from 1955 to the present in a solid EX condition or better!! No small feat I’ll grant you, but the scary thing is he’s not a million miles away from achieving it! He catalogues the trials and tribulations on pretty much a daily basis and it’s great to be a long for the ride as his collection grows to completion!

Craig has written a couple of posts recently that I wanted to bring to your attention and have linked below…

How to Start Collecting a Vintage Topps Set

To Stamp Or Not To Stamp, That Is The Question

The first of those two posts is a great introduction to anyone who has an interest in Vintage Topps sets and is thinking about starting a collection of Vintage Baseball cards. He offers some sound advice, picked up from years of experience in pursuing his Hobby goal and I’m sure that there’s something in there for any budding Vintage collector!

The second post I found really interesting, not to mention VERY surprising!! In ‘To Stamp Or Not To Stamp…’ Craig looks at Topps’ policy of stamping the special Buy Back cards that they’ve inserted into boxes of Topps Heritage over the last few years.

Initially working on the proviso that the stamping was a bad thing, and would somehow devalue the cards, he actually found the opposite. Read the article itself as Craig goes into more detail about his findings.

I have to confess I don’t like the idea of the Topps stamps on Vintage cards… full stop! To me the whole process somehow cheapens the look of the card and turns a genuine historical treasure into something resembling a modern insert! The whole process just doesn’t work for me!

One of the examples he uses to illustrate the stamping process is on a 1963 Topps Pete Rose Rookie card. Based upon his research a stamped version of this historical gem went for double the amount of an unstamped one in approximately the same condition?!?!? This just blows my mind!! That particular card is ridiculously highly sought after, and if I managed to pull one out of a small sealed pack hidden away in a box of Heritage Baseball, my initial feelings of elation would soon evaporate into the ether after seeing that Topps had put a bloody huge stamp in the corner…

Aside from the initial feeling of rage I think I’d weep a little on the inside!

Anyway, shoot on over to Craig’s blog (or follow him on Twitter @parker94ttu) for his thoughts on Vintage Baseball and enjoy (obviously remember to come back here when you’re finished :))

Remembering ‘The Big Three’

Baseball films come along so infrequently that when one does appear on the horizon you tend to sit up and take note.

Next year we get ’42’, charting the early career of Jackie Robinson, and last year we had Moneyball, which followed Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis (Sabermetrics) to acquire new players.

As much as I enjoyed Moneyball, particularly the scene-stealing presence of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as A’s then-manager, Art Howe, there was always something about the film that seemed really off to me. And it wasn’t really until a couple of days after watching it that I realised what it was…

Sure, much of the emphasis of the films ‘on-field’ action deals with Beane’s attempts to get Howe to play Scott Hattenberg as part of the new system that he’s trying to introduce into the team, but another of the major reasons for the A’s success in 2002 is completely missed out altogether…

And that was down to these guys…

2001 Topps Heritage – Barry Zito

2001 Topps Heritage – Mark Mulder

2001 Topps Heritage – Tim Hudson

For all it’s critical plaudits, Moneyball completely fails to even mention Oakland’s ‘Big Three’ of Barry Zito, Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson!!

Absolutely scandalous in my humble opinion as you just need to take a look at their stats for the season –

Zito – 23-5, ERA 2.75 and 182 Ks

Mulder – 19-7, ERA 3.47 and 159 Ks

Hudson – 15-9, ERA 2.98 and 152 Ks

Out of the total of 103 games won for the entire season, the ‘Big Three’ got over 55% of them between them… And not one mention in the movie?!?!

Oakland’s ‘Big Three’ has special significance for me as all three played a part in carrying my Fantasy team to victory that particular season, with Mulder and Hudson in and out of my squad at various time, but with Barry Zito there as a season-long fixture on his way to his first and only Cy Young award.

After leaving the A’s at various intervals over the following years the ‘Big Three’ never seemed to have as much success as they did together at Oakland, between the years 2000 to 2003.

Hudson was traded to the Braves in 2005 where he still pitches; Mulder was traded that same year to the Cards where he went on to spend the majority of the rest of his career on the DL before retiring in 2010; and Zito signed a bloated $126 million, seven year free agent deal with the Giants in the winter of 2006, where he went on to be dogged by injury and inconsistency before showing signs of his old self this year as he helped the Giants secure their second World Series win in three years this October.

The 2003 Donruss Signature set contains the only (as far as I’m aware) card to feature the autograph of Zito, Mulder and Hudson all on the same Baseball card. It very rarely appears on eBay (limited to only 50 copies), and when it does it tends to carry a ridiculously high price tag…

However one day I will own it… in memory of my favourite three-pitcher rotation since I began following Baseball and collecting Baseball cards!

Separated At Birth…?

I was looking over a few Buster Posey cards on eBay earlier this evening, looking to pick me up a couple of cheap rookie cards, when it suddenly dawned on me that the young Giants catcher (and 2012 NL MVP in my humble opinion) beared a striking resemblance to English singer/songwriter, TV presenter and X-Factor runner-up, Olly Murs…

Scary, but uncannily true! Don’t take my word for it, however… See for yourself…

Just don’t inflict any of his songs upon your good selves – I will not be held responsible if you do

2009 X-Factor (UK) Runner-Up – Olly Murs

2012 NL MVP (?) – Buster Posey