Heritage Gimmicks

Heritage has been out for about a week now, and now the gimmicks are coming to light.

I don't like them.

But I understand them.

The set is called Heritage, as it pay homage to sets from the past. But its put out by Topps, a company in the profit business, not the history business. I get why Topps does these things; to make money. I just don't like them.

Gimmick #1 Rookie Card nonsense...Night Owl has it covered.

All of these cards shown are pictures lifted from ebay.



Gimmick #2: Pictures reversed. The small black and white picture is placed where the large color picture belongs, and vice versa. Topps did this to 25 cards in the set, including one Cub, Starlin Castro. Why don't I like it? Two reasons; the big b/w picture looks ugly, and nothing like this was done with the original '63 set.



Gimmick #3: Colors reversed. Same idea above, except its the border colors that are switched. Also done to 25 cards, but no Cubs. Why don't I like it? Just another ploy to get collectors to chase more cards; no cards in the '63 set were reversed like this, either.

Gimmicks like these must drive set collectors crazy. In addition to the usual SPs that they have to chase in Heritage, now they've got another 50 cards to grab. Lucky for me the Cubs were lousy last year and lack the star power to be heavily featured on either checklist.





Gimmick #4 Error variation cards. The '63 sets has some several errors that were mostly uncorrected. Two of them were on Cub cards. Ken Hubbs card had his position omitted and Ron Santo's picture was mistakenly put on Don Landrum's card.

Topps has included both of these errors in the Heritage set, but with a big difference.



The Hubbs error is repeated on Darwin Barney's card. Good call here, as they are both Cubs second baseman.



The Landrum error shows up on Kerry Wood's card, with third baseman Aramis Ramirez picture showing up instead. But this is messed up. In 1963 you can understand how Topps could have put the wrong picture on the card; both guys in Cubs uniforms. Plus it was only the main picture that was wrong; the smaller picture is Landrum. But the Heritage version, with a Brewer? Really? Plus, they put Ramirez in both spots. This is a wreck.

So why don't I like it? Because the Heritage base cards of Wood and Barney don't have the error. The error cards are super short printed, and right now, are crazy expensive. The Barney picture I've got is from the only one sold on ebay and it went for $122.50. A second one ends today; its at $117.99 right now. The only Wood card sold went for $199.99. There's one being auctioned that still has a couple days to go and its at $105. Two BINs have crazy prices of $250 and $399.

The '63 cards were uncorrected errors and have no price premium, and that's the big difference. If Topps wanted to be true to the '63 set, the base cards would have the error and then they could have put out some super SPs with the correction.

I'd really like both cards (especially the Barney card for the player collection), but unless more show up, and prices drop, they are not going to end up in my hands.

In the meantime, I've got all my Heritage Cubs ordered from Brentandbecca. He busted a whopping 32 cases (thats 82,944 cards!) and I just have to wait patiently for the mailman to deliver.