End of the free ride

 

Since my first packs of 2023 Heritage back in late May I've bought plenty of the product but have spent very little money.

 

I purchased just one blaster with my own cash, from Walmart, in early June. Everything else has been "free" due to three key avenues:

 

1) A stockpile of gift cards

2) A well-timed birthday

3) TCDB transactions

 

That and $24.98 (plus the price of some stamps) has landed me around 425 cards of the 500-card set. I'm not one to open multiple boxes of a product (or even one box) and I rarely chase current sets anymore, so doing all that in less than three months' time is an achievement for me.

 

Recently, the Heritage had been arriving so quickly that I was struggling to keep up with what came from whom. Two separate TCDB trades involved Heritage and they arrived about the same time that a couple other blog- and reader-related packages with Heritage goodies showed up, too.

 

So, what you'll see here are cards that I've shown before, in some cases. And you'll see the same card a couple times on this post, too. Sorry, it's been a confusing embarrassment of riches lately.

 

These arrived from TCDB trader cr74 -- an apt name for cards that revolve around the 1974 Topps design. I received these cards before some other packages with Heritage arrived so now these look like dupes, but they weren't dupes at the time and much appreciated!

The Bowman Platinum Freddie is definitely not a dupe.

These Heritage needs (plus a Deckle Edge Hoyt!). These came from TCDBer coachspike. Hopefully his cards have arrived/are arriving soon.

 

All I needed to trade was a few music card dupes plus one mid-1990s card to get those and all these:

 

More 1985 Donruss! I have owned so few of these for so long that not only am I amazed that I have a lot more now, but I'm shocked that anyone else has any to spare. Didn't everyone buy almost no cards in 1985?

The final recent Heritage package showed up from reader Dana. He's always looking out for my card interests and it's much appreciated.

This includes the Naylor brothers (I recall being relieved when I found out that they were brothers because two guys showing up named Naylor after there have been no Naylors in MLB for like 80 years was on the verge of blowing my mind). More notably, it includes card No. 1 in the set, the Aaron-Aaron tribute card.

That card was pretty elusive, but not as elusive as Judge's actual card, which I still don't have and is not a short-print, and thank you very much, Topps for your deliberate collation games.

This group from Dana contains a couple of actual short-prints and the key Betts-Buxton leaders card, which may as well have been short-printed as it took me awhile to get and I still need a second one for team collecting.

The Dodgers stamps insert is very key. There are bunch of parallels of these which are unnecessary. I can avoid chasing these easily.

 

And with that, you've seen almost all of the new Heritage arrivals. There are a couple of cards here and there that are en route to me eventually.

 

But I think basically, this is the end of the free ride. I'm going to have to actually spend my own monies to get the rest.

 

That will be a little painful because, naturally, most of the cards left are SPs (Topps short-printing Heritage this year despite the original '74 set being released all at once is one of my least favorite card things of the year). But I'm taking a proactive tactic of acquiring a card here and there so I don't run into the problem I had with 2008 Heritage in which it took me 14 years to finish.

 

I feel fortunate that I've been able to be very thrifty on this set build. Hopefully it doesn't blow up in my face in the months to come.