MSRP: $2.99 per pack/
Total Cards: 191
Base Cards 166 / 425
Short Prints (1:3) 8 / 75 (Dye, Creede, Victorino, Reds Coaches, Yankees Coaches, Kearns, Jones AS, Fukudome AS)
Mayo Target Exclusive (1:4) 5 / 10 (Jones, Pedroia, Ramirez, Santana, Braun)
Chrome Parallel (1:10 #ed to 1960) 3 (Kazmir, Martin, Y. Molina)
Chrome Refractor (1: 31#ed to 560) 1 (Rick Ankiel)
New Age Performers (1:15) 2 (Tim Lincecum, Cole Hamels)
Then & Now (1:15) 2 (Friend/Halladay, Podres/Lincecum)
Baseball Flashback (1:12) 2 (Marichal, F. Robinson)
News Flashback (1:12) 1 (JFK)
Flashback Stadium Relic (1:390) 1 (Brooks Robinson)
I so rarely have the opportunity to actually purchase a blaster box of cards these days, let alone a full box, thus I don’t really post these very often. But this morning the stars, the moon and the sun all aligned properly and I managed to snag a box of Heritage for a very, very, very reasonable price. So reasonable I cannot divulge it, suffice to say, it was cheap.
Typically bloggers complain about Topps collation issues, especially in their Non-Sports sets. I have to say, I have NEVER had a box have perfect collation before today. There were NO DOUBLES in this box. None whatsoever, and with the exception of the “News Flashback” and the Mayo insert sets, I got more than my share of the standard inserts. In fact, I did a little bit better than average I think. The SPs fell perfectly every third pack. I should have gotten one more Mayo since they were supposed to fall once per four packs, but I’m not going to complain. I also should have gotten one more News Flashback given they fall two to a box. I did pull a refractor which I wasn’t guaranteed and one extra each of the New Age Performers and the Then & Now sets.
I really like the Baseball Flashbacks, so I’m glad that my relic was from that set, and it’s a pretty nice relic too. Any time your relic is a HOFer you should be pretty happy. Sure, it’s a piece of a seat from Memorial Stadium, but honestly it looks like it’s two different cuts. There’s no legalese on the card either, which is different. Looking at eBay I see that there are more than a few of them available right now, starting at less than a buck. The nice thing, however, is that there have been 10 completed single-item auctions in the last 90 days, the highest selling for $40 and the lowest selling for $11.99 with an average of about $18.50.
One last thing about the inserts is that there were 25 total inserts or SPs, which to me is great, since it averages out to at least one per pack. Problem is that they didn’t actually fall one in each pack, in two of the three packs that contained the Chrome parallels also contained a Mayo card, and at least three packs had no inserts at all.
The only real issue I had with the box is that there were a whopping THREE Angels cards. Out of 191 I got 3 Angels. That’s not nearly good enough for me. With 30 teams in MLB, one should expect at least 5 or 6 cards of any given team, but not in this box. I also didn’t pull ANY of the Super-Seven Variations, but that’s not surprising. I don’t have much luck pulling those, with the exception of the Fukudome Japanese card from last year’s UD.
I’m not planning on set building this one, though I think I’ll keep the Mayo inserts and try to build that set since it’s only 10 cards. If you’d like any of the base (besides the Angels) or any of the inserts, I’d be happy to trade for Angels, UCLA Bruins Basketball Alumni, Topps American Heritage, Indiana Jones Masterpieces or Barack Obama cards.
