With the way that Topps Heritage has dropped a lot of the traditions that made it so fun to collect, I kind of assumed/implied that every tribute used in the past was out the window. But that's not entirely the case. The subsets from the chosen year still exist, the All-Star logos do, too. The design is the same -- um, sort of. And, I realized that Heritage is still matching card numbers, linking players who play on the respective team now with one who played on it then. I don't know if it's happening as often as when I first did this comparison 12 or 13 years ago, probably not. But it's nice to know something is still right with this brand that's been the biggest disappointment of the 2026 card year for me so far. I went through the modest amount of 2026 Heritage I have and found a handful of matches. I'll start with the obvious ones. Each of the 2026 Heritage card shares its number with the 1977 Topps card. The italicizing of NL and removing the peri...
Rod of Padrographs is sending out cards again and I received one of the envelopes last week. A nice surprise. The package contained a mix of then and now and I couldn't help but see the passage of time in the card contents, what/who was supposedly a big deal then and what/who is supposedly a big deal now. Take this pack of 1991 Stadium Club that was part of the send. This was the first Stadium Club set and something I totally missed out on in 1991 (Most of my focus was on Topps flagship, Score and here-and-there purchases of Fleer and Upper Deck). My introduction to Stadium Club took place the following year. But I certainly heard about the brand at the time. "Premium" sets were a big deal. The cards were "upscale" for the time. And Stadium Club hit it home on the wrapper by mentioning that Kodak was involved and displaying the Kodak label. For anyone who grew up in the mid-20th century, Kodak was synonymous with film and photography. My very first chea...