Topps Heritage Side by Side: 1953 / 2002

I love the whole Heritage concept, but the Topps Heritage 2002 cards are one of my least favorite. Looking at the old and the new side by side will help me explain.

All of the 1953 cards featured painted portraits of the players, and most were close up head shots. But many of the Heritage cards feature action photos. These absolutely do not match the style of the originals.

This card of Paul Minner is pretty typical of most from the '53 set, while this Heritage shot of Juan Cruz completely misses the mark on the style of 1953.




I also absolutely cannot stand the Cubs logo on the Heritage cards. It isn't even the modern Cubs logo. For some reason, Topps has added a red circle to the logo. It makes it look like a Target logo instead of the Cubs. I don't know why they didn't just stick with the blue circle of the actual logo.

I love the old fashioned bear Cub that Topps used on many of the Cubs cards from the 1950's. I use that logo as my avatar at different websites. The Target-Cubs logo is a lousy replacement.

I think these cards of Kerry Wood and Kevin Tapini do a decent job of matching the style of this original 1953 Toby Atwell




These two cards of the team leaders. The head shot of Sammy should have been bigger to better match the style of the '53 cards. Of course, it could never be said that Sammy had a small head. In fact, the opposite was probably true, his head got way too big. ( If the steroids allegations are true, something else of Sammy's would have gotten smaller, but I really don't want to go down that road!)