The rest of the 2023 Heritage story

 

My Target gift card for Christmas went to a "giant box" of 2023 Heritage High Numbers, naturally. More of that 1974 design? I had to explore.

Heritage High has always been a weird bird. Longtime card bloggers probably remember when Topps mixed Heritage High Numbers in with Topps Update (then called "Updates & Highlights) -- like in the same packs -- to encourage collectors to buy High Numbers. Now, Topps postpones the appearance of several notable players until High Numbers to promote the brand. Nobody likes this set, I guess.

But without having to spend my own cash on it I gave it a shot. The main Heritage set is finished, but that's only 500 ... er, 501 cards. The '74 set was 660 cards!

The problem with that is Heritage High Numbers is 225 cards, which brings the total to 725 ... er, 726 (hey, hang on until 2027 Heritage and that will work!). So what to do?

Well, I'm not going to try to finish Heritage High, I knew that. That would be more short-prints to chase. Also, there are a bunch of players (i.e. rookies) I've never heard of in this set. So I compiled a list of 160 ... er, 159 cards I could collect that would get me to a set of 660 for Heritage. These are all players that I know played last season and I've heard of, for the most part (for a couple others if they had 200 or 300 at-bats I gave them the benefit).

Cards like this, which are team updates from the main Heritage set, I did not include -- because '74 Topps did not have player repeats (although there are two Pablo Lopez cards in the main release and add this Twins one and there are now 3 Lopezes in the set!)

So how did I do with the box?

I did all right. I pulled 76 cards that could go to the 660-card set. I pulled a few more than that, but they're Dodgers and they go to the team set first. The 76 total gets me to 577 for the set, so there are 82 cards to go.

I might be able to get to that total before 2024 Heritage comes around. I'll see if I can keep my enthusiasm for this.

Now as far as other observations from the box:

Here are some of the players who could have made the main Heritage checklist. Some were held back to capture their new teams, I'm sure. But there are players like Mountcastle and Correa who didn't change teams.

The best pack for a Dodger collector was the second-to-last one as these three all appeared.

In fact, a pretty decent box for the Dodgers. I think I need just three cards to finish the team set now, along with any inserts -- several of which I'll ignore.

 

The Dodgers can't compete with the Marlins though, holy hell are there a lot of Marlins in High Numbers.

 

 

 This made me take notice, I'm not on top of the latest details on current sets anymore so I had no idea they "corrected" the Angels cards by filling in the blank flag at the top for High Numbers. Sure, it's not "Los Angeles" but they can't do that thanks to Arte, and "American League" is somewhat of a tribute to the Washington cards in the original '74 set.

I also didn't know that there were corrected Angels cards inserted as case hits (or even tougher pulls) of the Angels players in the main Heritage set. Nothing like getting collectors to chase down your corrected screw-ups. 

 

These are the short-prints I pulled (Schoop is the last card in the set). Five SPs in 15 packs is why I'm not going to finish the full High Numbers set. I had that go-round once already.

 

 

My chrome card in the box was Tyler Stephenson and one of the three blue-sparkle chrome cards was also Tyler Stephenson. But I did NOT pull the regular Tyler Stephenson card.

All right, here are a few single cards:

There is a nine-card Hank Aaron insert set and I think I pulled the best card.

Another pleasing insert. This whole insert set is '70s players I should be trying to track down the whole thing -- plus an extra Davey Lopes card.

I think this might be the first time this mound move has ever been captured on a card.

My hit. This will be headed to Sports Cards From The Dollar Store.

Here is the famed Jose Urena Padres card. Urena has never played for the Padres. He did not sign with the Padres in the last year but here he is as a Padre.

 

 

Just one card back to show of the annoyingly competitive-in-the-postseason-but-with-a-5.72-ERA-in-the-regular-season Brandon Pfaadt. That's all they could come up with about the guy, he moved a step or two to the left.

 

Finally a couple crooked rookies (the card, not them) I don't have to chase.

The 76 cards will be going in my Heritage binder and I hope to fill the rest of the spots in the months to come. I'll probably be making a want list on the blog and TCDB so people know which ones I want because it's very subjective.

But that's collecting. We collect what we like.