Yesterday I impulsively ordered one of those "megaboxes" for 2025 Heritage from Fanatics. Just a few hours later I received an email from Target: "Good news! 2024 Heritage High Numbers is back in stock!"
Sorry, Target, my budget doesn't allow me to buy two kinds of Heritage at the same time.
This is the mess Topps has gotten itself into by delaying the '24 Heritage High Numbers three months into 2025 while still churning out the Heritage set for this year. I'm on record as liking the 1975 Topps design very much and by extension the 2024 Heritage design, but I can't juggle both. And if someone like me can't, what about those (weirdos) who don't like '24 Heritage as much?
I'm now in the situation of prioritizing Heritage brands, which is something that has never happened before for me. Like flagship -- and Allen & Ginter during the golden era -- I cleared my calendar for Heritage. No other sets issued around the same time meant much to me because HERITAGE WAS HERE!
Now we've got two Heritages and now I'm going to have to rank them in order of desirability. Heritage High will always lose in that ranking. I'm sure I'll buy some at some point, probably months from now. But right now all I care about are the Dodgers from that set.
Rod of Padrographs got me off to a good start on those recently:
That's my first look. Don't worry about the dupes -- Heritage is one of those sets that I always put cards aside just in case I want to finish the whole thing. How about that choice of Andre Lipcius for this set? Lipcius played all of 2024 for Oklahoma City (had a pretty fine year), and is now a member of the White Sox, meaning he hasn't ever played for the Dodgers, so we've got an alternate reality card.
So that gets me on my way. I still need five more Dodgers, but none of them are short-prints, so that won't be an issue.
Rod also sent a few other Dodger needs from 2024/2025:
All inserts and parallels, of course! The Will Smith is a pine tree parallel from 2024 Holiday -- notice there are more parallels than ever in Holiday. The 2025 Ohtani is something called a "Sandglitter" parallel and, yes, that took me 10 minutes to figure out.
Packages from Rod often come with legends cards, which I always enjoy.
And look here: a baseball card book that I had never heard of before! I was kind of floored by this, though had I been paying attention I would've noticed several online profiles on this, from the Baseball Hall of Fame and Sports Collectors Daily, among others. It came out in December 2023.
It's written by a former New York Times editor and SABR member and it's a card-by-card look at the 1959 set, with a few sentences about each card, in order from No. 1 to No. 572. So, in other words, a book I could have written except with the 1975 Topps set. Think I missed the boat!
There are images of 1959 Topps cards in the book but they appear sporadically -- I counted 50 pictures. They're all black & white. The author thanks Topps and Fanatics for the use of the card images. I don't know if he got them from Topps or used his own cards or whether that makes a difference.
Maybe there's hope for me yet -- I mean if he was collecting Topps in 1959, he's quite a bit older than I am.
I think I also uncovered a bookmark from Rod nestled inside.
Once I get my box of 2025 Heritage from Fanatics, I'll supply a full report as usual. I have completed each of the last two Topps Heritage sets and the 1976 design is still at the heart of my early collecting days -- I should try to complete it, but I don't know if I have the will power to do this three years in a row.
Again, that's a lot of money -- which is why Heritage High Numbers can take a seat for a good while.
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