A tribute to the past reminds me how disappointed I am by the present

 

Topps released Heritage this week. You're going to have to wait until I can use my Target gift card on some though before I offer an actual rundown of the set.

I've been saving that gift card since Christmas -- something I almost never do -- specifically for Heritage. This year's set is using the 1974 Topps design, and although Topps has beaten every past design into irrelevance by throwing them into Archives and a thousand inserts each year, this year's Heritage still meant something to me.

Cards from the '74 set are the first ones I ever owned. (Yes, we are now getting into I AM OLD Heritage territory). The story has been told since the first posts on my blog but one day in 1974, my mom came home from the grocery store and handed me, I was 8, and my brother, he was 7, a cello pack of '74 Topps. To this day, I still remember the excitement of seeing certain cards from that set -- Eddie Leon, Aurelio Rodriguez, Tommy John -- cards can transport you to a specific fleeting moment better than anything besides music.

 

For this reason, I've always enjoyed the '74 set more than most collectors do, it seems. I suppose it's fairly staid compared with some of the designs from the '70s but there's no topping those pennant flags, and some of the cards -- just look at the Oakland A's -- are stars from that decade.

 

But Heritage is not the 1974 set and Topps has been leaning into that fact more and more over the years.

 

I have detailed how Heritage has gotten farther away from its original intent, which was paying tribute to past Topps designs by being as faithful to the original as possible. That's the way the set was when I first encountered Heritage in 2008. But because Topps can't help feeding the addiction of box breakers and the like, there are more and more trappings of the modern set apparent in Heritage.

In 2008, Heritage featured, aside from the base set and a few inserts, chrome parallels, along with chrome refractor and black-border refractor parallels. They were fun little sidelights, nothing found in the 1959 set that was the tribute design that year, but fun to chase.

Now, in 2023, Heritage contains those chrome parallels, but also stuff so far away from '74 that we've left Barry White and "Good Times" in the dust. There are black-and-white variations and image variations and name-position swap variations and throwback uniform variations and, for crying out loud, MINIS??? You just killed the unique feature in 2024 Heritage, Topps.

 

I know I don't have to collect any of this, and thank goodness, but there are other ways that Heritage -- that set about the past -- has crept more into the present.

 

Here is the 2023 Heritage Dodgers team set. Lots to say about this, but let's focus on the short-prints. You know, THAT THING THAT DIDN'T EXIST IN 1974.

My hope was now that we had gotten into sets that were not sold in series -- '74 Topps arrived all at once, 1-660 -- that we'd be over this short-print business. Shame on me for being so gullible. Yes, there are SPs for no reason related to any past reality, anything concrete at all, except Topps wants your money.

All right, now for another thing: the number of Dodgers in this set is relatively small, which is fine. But there are some noted names missing, and for the second year in a row, the big one is Clayton Kershaw.

Topps is continuing the habit -- again to get people to spend -- of postponing some stars until the Heritage High Numbers set, a set that traditionally had been about updating players with their new teams, etc. But we're not doing that anymore either, because none of Topps' sets now has any defining attribute other than where can they find money?!?!?

There are some other Dodgers missing like Chris Taylor and Tony Gonsolin. I assume players like J.D. Martinez and Miguel Vargas and Noah Syndergaard were saved to get them in their proper uniforms, but that doesn't explain why Cody Bellinger and Justin Turner are in regular Heritage -- and not as Dodgers.

 

Also, there are rookie cups in this set. Everyone knows that rookie cups didn't show up until 1975 Topps.

So, I know a lot of this is my issue -- there are a bunch of new collectors in the last couple of years who ask "what is Heritage" and when told there isn't much flash to it are instantly turned off, that's the way collectors are going -- I'm just an old collector who remembers things that a growing number of people don't.

But people don't know how nice (and calm) it was then and it certainly wasn't this:

My goodness, if I was pulling cards like this out of my cello pack in 1974, I don't know if I'd ever end up collecting cards. That blank spot -- are we supposed to write something in? -- probably is the dumbest card thing I'll see this year.

This is how the Angels' Justin Upton card looked in 2020 Archives, too. Topps has had years to mull over the impending '74 Heritage design and the Angels team name and decided to do absolutely nothing.

I know Topps has used "Angels" without a city name for a number of years, that's a dumb legal name thing that it probably has to dance around -- and this is another present-day issue that makes zero sense. But how about turning it into a San Diego/Washington tribute from the same year with Angels at the bottom and "Amr'n Lea." at the top or vice versa?

I would have loved if Heritage named the Angels what they were actually called then, "California" on the top and "Angels" on the bottom, but I suppose Arte Moreno's lawyers would have melted down.

So, anyway, I will buy at least one blaster of Heritage, probably be annoyed about the present, note that the backdrops are fake and pull out my binder of my complete 1974 set to remind myself of what that set really was.

 

Heritage used to try really hard to be about the past and it was fun. Collectors really appreciated it and admired the tributes. I'm not saying there isn't some of that in Heritage still. But what's really apparent now is that Heritage tries really hard to be about the present, and like many present-day card things, it's not much fun. The legalese and cash grabbiness practically leaps off of each card.

 

But, you know, yay, pennant flags.