Opinions on heritage cards

MacrosB

I've been trying to pick up a box of each of the Topps heritage baseball cards and I wondering, besides the 2001/1952 Heritage cards which year do you think is the best Heritage set both in looks and what is included in the set. Also, is there one of them that is not very good and not worth getting more than one box to have the whole series?
And are the Bowman Heritage boxes worth pickin gup also. I haven't actually seen any cards from those sets in person. Thanks for your help.

Jim

VitoCo1972

I love '09 Heritage. That's the one I'd pick after '01. one of the Bowman Heritages are pretty good. The 2001 (1948 B&W Style) one is the best. I also like 06 (49 Style)

mcadams

My personal favorite is the '03 set which resembles '54 Topps.

MacrosB

<< <i>I love '09 Heritage. That's the one I'd pick after '01. one of the Bowman Heritages are pretty good. The 2001 (1948 B&W Style) one is the best. I also like 06 (49 Style) >>



So on the Bowman 2001 is 48 and 2006 is 49? Do they just skip around instead of going up one year each year like the Topps Heritage?

Jim

parkerj

Yes bowman heritage jumps around and doesn't have nearly the following. 2005 is the best imo. Best photography, best sp checklist, but it really depends on what original design is preferred. 2008 is the most plentiful. 2001 is least. 2002-2005 were the heydays and also least plentiful. Picture quality was poorest on 2006-2009. Just bad photoshopping and too washed out.

TNP777

'04 was fantastic for autographs - no other year approached it in my opinion.

edit: to clarify, '04 was great for pulling autographs. After '04, they just didn't seem to fall out of packs at the same rate.

twiley

2004 Topps Heritage is my favorite Heritage set so far.

brian26

I'm partial to the 2003 Heritage set. Love that design....it was the first run of Heritage I collected before going back to do 2001 and 2002.

Walt

Ill third the love for the 03 set..classic and some nice autographs to pull!

fur72

I really enjoyed the 2005 Bowman Heritage set. Several parallel cards and mini sub set.

bishop

I have put together all the Heritage sets to compliment my original sets, and in both have tried to get all of the "variations" ( not done with the 2011 Heritage set on that front yet). I like them all and think Topps did a good job on all of them. Because the 1959 Topps set was the first one I finished, I am partial to it and it's Heritage counterpart.

I have also continued to by the regular Topps sets to keep a full run going, although since 1994, most of the regular sets are still in factory boxes ( I have the Heritage sets in Binders)

Anyone have any idea of the rough sales volumes that Topps has experienced with their regular issues versus the Heritage issue ? I wonder if Heritage is their top modern product ?

MacrosB

Besides the 2011 Heritage baseball cards, which have a specific box in the case with the green refractors, are there any other years of the Topps Heritage baseball sets that you gain something buying a case instead of 12 loose random boxes because there is something in the case that you might miss out on with the individual boxes? Thank-you for your help.

BTW based on looking at prices, is 2008 the leaset popular set or maybe the most production. There seems to be a definite price difference between that set and the ones before or after.

Jim

RookieWax

I also have a heritage question. In 2001, I bought several hobby and retail boxes of heritage - about a 5000 count box full. When I sorted them to try to make a set, I somehow was still missing several commons from the base part of the set(not the short printed low or high numbers). Are there any such short prints that anyone knows of?

mccardguy1

I had a card shop back when the 2001 Heritage came out and I do not recall any common cards that were any harder to pull than the others...outside of the SP's of course. I was able to put 4 sets together including all the variations of the 2001 set by the cards my customers left behind. I sold all of them and am now putting my 5th set together and am about 50 cards short, all sp's. Picking them up here and there when I find a good price on them but none of the cards I need are the "common" cards that you missed Rookie!

RookieWax

Thanks. Must have just been an unusual situation where I got many of the same packs with the same cards over and over.

parkerj

Rookie, there are no special short prints in 2001 in the base grouping of 81-310. However, the 10 black cards that are printed in that grouping are slightly rarer than the other card numbers because they were printed on the same sheets as the 1-80 lo# short prints. So they are at the same print rate as the lo# short prints. My data strongly suggests the lo# short prints (both red and black) were printed at about half the print run of the normal base cards. So if you looked at the total number of redback #23 (for example) and the total # of black back 23, it would be the same as the number printed as of card #81 (which only is in redback). The high #s (311-407) are a differnt matter and were probably printed at 1/4 the rate....but i haven't revisited that math recently.

As for the special boxes, there is no value of buying 12 together from a case versus 12 random boxes...however usually the autos fall 1-2 per case, so your best bet at getting an auto is buying a full case. FYI, 2008 was the most heavily produced set, followed closely by 2007 and 2006. 2009 and after, they pulled back and only printed based on what was pre-ordered by the hobby dealers.

TonyC

Jim,

2008 is definitely the cheapest. One of the possible reasons is that the photography wasn't great in the set; I remember opening packs when it first came out and noticing that many of the pictures were blurry or washed out. On the flip side, it is also the first year of guaranteed hits in Heritage, so you would think that would have helped anchor the price.

I would personally stick to Topps Heritage over Bowman Heritage, not so much because of card designs (there are equally good and bad years of each product), but because the rookie emphasis of the Bowman brand makes the product less fun to open and the set less fun to build now that we are so many years far removed from the release date; collecting the product turns into flipping through a lot of "has-beens" and "never weres"." Some people may disagree, but that is how I feel on that issue.