Card #30, then and now.
For several years, I’ve been looking forward to the release of the 2021 Topps Heritage set. I had the release date marked on my calendar four years ago for the regular set, the high numbers, and the minor league set, just waiting for the day when it dropped. Originally I was looking to buy a case of it, but with skyrocketing card prices over the last year I scaled back to just buying a complete set. Maybe eventually two or three. I grabbed a few packs as well, plus a blaster from Topps’ site.
Since 2014, I’ve been working on getting the original 1972 Topps baseball card set autographed. Out of 863 signatures needed across 787 cards, I have 475 of them. I’ve done the same with two smaller sets in the 1972 design as well– 2013 Topps Archives’ first 50 cards, and the 100-card mini insert from the 2013 Topps flagship product. So I knew I would be doing the same with the 2021 Heritage set which borrows the old “psychedelic tombstone” design.
I’ve always loved the concept of Topps Heritage and how they recycled old designs, old errors, and even photo choices and player selections to replicate past sets for the present. The 2011 set was the first one I really got into heavily, as it used the 1962 design; a set from which I have a bunch of my dad’s old cards from when he was a kid. That year’s set had green-tint cards randomly inserted, replicating an error from 1962. In 2018, they had a few cards with the player’s last name in the wrong color, an error found in 1969. The parallelling of the 1962 set and 2011 Heritage set was phenomenal. Houston Manager Harry Craft with Houston Manager Brad Mills on each card #12; a couple Reds rookie third basemen on card #41; Robinson Cano with Bobby Richardson on card #65… They even got the photos similar!
Topps really put in some thought on player placement. In the 2006 set that parallels the 1957 set, Mickey Mantle’s spot on card #95 was taken by another Yankee slugger in Alex Rodriguez, and Warren Spahn lined up with Braves’ great Chipper Jones. The 1962/2011, 1963/2012, and 1964/2013 sets had almost every original player reflected with a current player from the same team and position, or some other attributes.
In 1967 and 2016, they made a Tribe Thumpers card on #109– 1967 featured Rocky Colavito and Leon Wagner, while 2016 was Jason Kipnis and Francisco Lindor. Even as recently as 2020, the Heritage set paralleled the 1971 set quite well– Tigers Rookies were on #39, Cubs Rookies on #121, Dodgers Rookies in #188, Orioles Rookies on #362, and card #5 of Thurman Munson lines up with Gary Sanchez with similar photos and the same horizontal design. And of course 1970 and 2019 had the sunglasses photos of Phillies’ pitchers Lowell Palmer and Pat Neshek, respectively: both were card #252.
It pained me to see Topps keep on delaying its release, from March 3 to March 17 to March 19 to March 26. It frustrated me to visit fourteen Walmarts and Targets last weekend and come away with nothing until I paid $7.50 a pack at my local card shop on Sunday (alleviated by grabbing the 400 card non-short-print base set for $70 on eBay). And ultimately, it was excruciating to see that this set has failed massively. And more the following year. With the Rockies, they at least paired Pacheco with a catcher from a team that no longer exists; and Danny Murphy with David Murphy is a fun link.
Nothing has been said about the 1972 variations with several Cubs’ players having the underside of the C and S in “CUBS” with a green coloring instead of yellow.
There are no team cards or manager cards (which disappointingly haven’t been done since 2018).
The Rookie Stars cards aren’t done exclusively by team, though the vast majority were in 1972.
The World Series cards no longer line up with their placement in the original set. Nor do the Boyhood Photos Of The Stars
And most irksome to me: the percentage of In Action subsets is entirely too high. There are 72 In Action cards in the 500-card set (versus 72 in 787 in the original). It’s overkill.
Only three got lined up: Cleon Jones with Pete Alonso, Ronald Acuna with Hank Aaron, Josh Bell with Roberto Clemente… But why not Javier Baez with Glenn Beckert? Why is Mike Trout parallelling Vida Blue instead of Willie Mays? Nelson Cruz with Steve Renko instead of Harmon Killebrew?
And how can you possibly drop the ball on lining up Carl Yastrzemski with grandson Mike? While Topps had let up on a lot of the direct parallels, they did keep the Tribe Thumpers on card #109 in both the 1967 and 2016 sets.
There once was a good effort put in for the card historians out there who appreciated attention to detail. This product is lacking in it. It’s underwhelming. Cheap. Mailed in. Outside of Jones, Acuna, and Bell, only three other cards even have the teams line up. That’s less than 1%, making me think that was more coincidental than any legitimate effort.
Why are the Reds’ rookies on different Rookie Stars cards? Tyler Stephenson is with Atlanta’s William Contreras, and Jose Garcia is with Pittsburgh’s KeBryan Hayes. Why is Dylan Carlson paired with Seattle’s Evan White instead of with Cardinals’ rookie teammates Kodi Whitley and Roel Ramirez?
The lackadaisical effort is incredibly disappointing, and serves as further evidence that Topps doesn’t care about the set builder and historian and will gladly kick them aside to cater to the breakers, investors, flippers, and hit chasers.
Speaking of lackadaisical, what’s with the terrible, misaligned font on the Blue Jays and Marlins cards? Where is the World Series Game 3 card? And what happened to card #216? No one has seen the Cavan Biggio card, and Topps won’t even admit they either A. forgot to print it or B. are pulling some funny business. No one has pulled the card yet from a pack.
I still plan on getting as much of the set autographed as I possibly can. But I haven’t been this disappointed by a card set in a long time. Topps should be ashamed of its subpar effort, and I can only hope they do better when they release the High Numbers and Minor League sets this fall. Sure, that font is tough to pull off. But if I, a rank amateur, can do it reasonably well, shouldn’t a professional nail it?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A native of Northeast Ohio, Drew Pelto has spent thirty years as a sports memorabilia collector and works as a card company photo editor. His writing has been featured on Uni-Watch, USAFloorball.org, Sports Card Forum, Tuff Stuff Magazine, and Sports Fans Online in addition to contributing to Nine-Inning Know-It-All. A former play-by-play broadcaster in several sports, he lives in North Texas with his wife and their two cats.
One thought on “2021 Topps Heritage Review: An Exercise in Apathy”
I noticed the lack of team cards as in 1972. Topps would not have been able to get those photographs due to the pandemic. We also don’t know how much they were scrambling with remote work to design these cards given Pennsylvania or employer directions to work remotely, which may explain some of the review.
I noticed the lack of team cards as in 1972. Topps would not have been able to get those photographs due to the pandemic. We also don’t know how much they were scrambling with remote work to design these cards given Pennsylvania or employer directions to work remotely, which may explain some of the review.