Enough of Heritage 2012...

....let's start thinking about Heritage 2013!

I'll bring Heritage week to a close today by taking a sneak peak at next year's product.

For those of you who thought that the 1963 design was boring, well, you're really going to be bored with next years design. I would have to say that the 1964 design is about as unintersting as it gets.



Here is Mr. Cub from 1964. The card design has nothing at all to it. Team name in black, colored band on the bottom, and a picture. The only interesting feature is that most pictures are head shots, and the top of the hat is cropped into the white border at the top. Otherwise, nothing.



Here is my mockup of Starlin Castro's card. With such a bland design, these are very easy to make.

The most unique feature of the 1964 cards is on the back.



Most cards have a trivia question on the bottom, and to see the answer, you have to scratch a coin on the card to reveal it.



It will be very interesting to see it Topps goes all out and reproduces this feature, which is the more expensive way to go, or if they take the cheap way out and just print the answer. As soon as I wrote "take the cheap way out" I think I answered my own question. But I hope I'm wrong.

The 1964 set also included a set of coins as inserts.



Last year's Baseball Bucks and this years stickers are fairly cheap and easy to produce. The coins will be trickier and costlier to make. Think we will see them?



If so, here's one I hope to get.

Finally, there is one card from 1964 which I hope Topps doesn't have to make.



I can handle the Barney / Hubbs symmetry with the no position error card in this year's Heritage. I'd rather not see an "In Memoriam" card for Darwin Barney next year. I hope Barney doesn't have plans to get a pilots license.