A Nifty Nine (#5) from another old friend

2011 spelunking continues here in base set land; this simpler (200 card set) project was also way-overdue and long anticipated: collating my purchases of the 2011 set known as "Lineage."

I have done most of the normal collecting work with the set as I have been occasionally making progress on the parallel version of the base card checklist - the '75 minis - as well as paying attention to all the wonderful inserts in this product, and another fantastic Shiny parallel it holds, too.

What I had never done, however, is discover if I actually had a normal Complete Set of the regular base checklist. As it turns out, I am still 6 cards short, and as with my findings collecting the '75s, they are disproportionately in the last 25% of the checklist (all 6) and even the last ten cards in the 190s (2). So weird.

The Cy Young card caught my eye immediately. I have very, very few other Cy Young cards (4, I think) and I began to wonder - why not? These days, I can be scrolling through a visual example of pretty much every Cy Young baseball picture product ever created in less than a minute by merely typing his name into the COMC search engine.

That was quite interesting. This 2011 card from Topps marked the end of his appearance in Topps products for nearly ten years subsequently, after just four years of creating cards from 08-11. I'm guessing that Cy Young's descendants are tough/shrewd/smart negotiators for this perhaps. Even Panini only managed a 3 year run of Cy Young cards. Just lately, I should note, Topps has issued a few new cards.

But those are also quite interesting: they are largely repeats, in terms of photo selection. There probably just aren't that many existing photographs of Cy Young that even can be used, I assume.

Lately I have begun making little piles of cards for a new mini project: assembling a binder page (just one) of 9 different cards that all use the same image. I don't anticipate it will be difficult.

As it turns out, the image used above has appeared on so many cards, stretching back 60 years, that multiple pages of cards using just that image could be assembled. (I won't be attempting that with this photo). I have to wonder if it might somehow be in the public domain.

I also discovered why I am so drawn to this basic Cy Young card: this image was used first by Fleer in the early 60s, and then used some more in the mid-70s, when little ole Base Set was buying those oddball packs of Fleer gum that came with pretty cool MLB logo patches and these really cool cartoon baseball cards drawn by Robert Laughlin. A card he created for Cy Young is a basic sketch of this same image superimposed over a ginormous "511" - "Cy Young won 511 games" - the most ridiculously ginormous Baseball Feat I had ever heard - the whole thing is permanently etched in my brain for all eternity, though the basic sketch had faded some.

cribbed from ebay, I confess

And now here I had a true baseball picture card to match all these years later, courtesy of Topps.

The Lineage set was pretty interesting in this way - 25% Hall-of-Famers, a few Very Goods, and the balance the best contemporary players in 2011, with only 6% Rookies.

As I carefully sorted my stash of 500 or so base cards (I bought this in dusty cheap discounted blasters and hangers in closing down K-Marts all over the Midwest well into the 2010s, chasing those 75 minis and just generally enjoying every pack), I slowly realized something unfortunate: I really can't justify placing 2 copies of the set onto binder pages on my future Tiny Home bookshelf. And the beautiful '75 minis will be the first choice; totally worth 20 pages on that shelf.

But as I happily assembled the cards in their sequential order, I kept finding cards I knew I would not want to keep, only in their mini form. I knew what to do: pull out a fresh binder page.

Before I show you my picks for a 9 Best Of Lineage, I wanted to share one just regular 2011 player card from the set:

The Giants were a new team for Miguel Tejada in 2011, so Topps stepped up with a fresh Spring Training photo for his new Lineage card. I think this one will be finely represented via '75 mini style, and the full-size card will look nice with some Sunglasses buddies, too. There are a few other cards using this photo source option, which I quite like to see mixed in with action shots from regular MLB games.

Lineage is also home to one of my favorite Miguel Cabrera cards, perhaps the only player I will be collecting beyond a single 9 card page:

Did you know Miggy has a tattoo on his right arm? Now you do.

This card has a great flow to it, with lines in the image complementing lines in the design - the 3 sided design. I would like to see this concept used again in a set of baseball cards. Leaving the right side open like that is a nice way to let the viewer's imagination imagine the action continuing, off to Miggy's left, on this card, and many others in the set as well. With this one, the mini treatment is not an improvement:

I like authentic Vintage centering.

That's still a great baseball card; I enjoy both versions. Lineage will be supplying several cards to those 1 player, 1 page assemblages (Cy Young may be a challenge), as well as a few to pages like the Sunglasses pages.

Some other fine day I will crack into my box of Lineage inserts and maybe even start clicking the 'Buy Now' button on COMC for the ones I still need there. But for now let's see which cards made my

 Lineage Nifty Nine

One of the best Mantles Topps has ever sent me.

Looks like Detroit was playing in NYC that day, too.

And, yeah, card #7.

Analog film warmth is tough to beat.

Analog dirt!

I am not a fan, or collector of, Joe Morgan cards. But, this one, yah, eh? Joe just arrived in his own little cloud of dust. It's the game of "base" ball and this is Joe Morgan's base, not the runner's. Get me the ball, hurry up. This guy is gonna be OUT.

This card looks like a painting.

Not just a Night Card. A World Series Night Card.

Got racing stripe?

A great late afternoon card.

Ten year old Base Set would have loved this card. Could you imagine living in a house right behind the fence on one of the Orioles Spring Training complex "back fields" - how freaking cool would that be?

This card is a twin to the 2011 Topps Justin Duchscherer card I included in my look at 2011 Topps a few days ago. Dime Boxes reports that it is actually a Year-Zero card, i.e. he never pitched for the Orioles.

For some reason back there in Spring Training 2011, the Orioles/Topps held Photo Day back there in view of suburbia. Some of the resulting Orioles 2012 Heritage cards look like the players are getting ready to play one of the very best varieties of baseball: Back Yard Home Run Derby. Glorious. In 2012, they instead moved the Orioles to standing in front of a Borg-cube like pure black "Batter's Eye" wall elsewhere in the Spring Training complex. Turrible, just turrible. Let's get back to The Nine:

Yup, card #2.

Wait. Derek Jeter played a Bloody Sock game too?

What's up with that?

Did the Yankees win the game?

Lines, lines everywhere a line,

makin' nice scenery,

soothin' my mind

That's Yovani Gallardo there at card #9; 2011 was maybe the halfway point of the Foil printing era for Topps. Foil text only sometimes scans well but the last name on these cards sits on a field of black and that works out just fine on the cards, in-hand. I doubt you need any clarification on the other 8 cards on this page, which turned out thusly:

Another small item of note about this set: there are no horizontal cards to make you crane your neck when they get stuck in the middle of dozens of their vertical cousins.

I thought about calculating a Zoom Index for this set, but with the use of so many photographs that were anywhere from 10 to 100 years older than current day photos used, I decided it wouldn't reveal all that much anyway. 

Plus, I have so many more various baseball card projects to attend to. See y'all real soon.

All New Series!

This is definitely a good year to be absorbing some brand new baseball cards. I have been buying some on and off this year, but lost the enthusiasm for cards when it was uncertain if we would even have a baseball season.

That has worked itself out, for now, so I have been quite enjoying listening to some live baseball, that actually "counts," and ripping some packs.

The other day I lucked into finding Series Two on my local shelf, when it had only been there for a few minutes, I think. The MJ Holdings rep was still there setting out new cards when I walked up to the section. Otherwise, I kind of doubt I would have been able to see this card as my First Card in this year's Series Two:

That's the Meijer's exclusive purple parallel, from the 'Big Box' chain that conveniently built a store in my hometown a few years ago now. I quite like these parallels this year; I guess 1/4 of a colorful frame is better than no frame at all. And I like the tint and pattern to the special 'parallel' section of the card - bright. I like nice bright, colorful baseball cards.

But overall, this continuing 'full bleed' era in the Topps Baseball set is wearing me down and these cards in particular are bleeding into my memories of the 2017 set. Oh how grey life can be sometimes - I don't want grey on my baseball cards, outside of the traditional road grey uniforms on the players. I kind of doubt I want a binder full of a set of these, so I am looking at buying a Complete Set / Factory Set, whenever those actually appear this year, if the ravenous 'retail flippers' happen to leave one on a store shelf for me to buy, complete with my 1-in-ten-thousand-comes-for-the-no-name-cards-inside chance at some special Chromed /13 version of yet another Luis Robert Rookie Card sure to be worth a million dollars, some day. Could become an ongoing dilemma, possibly.

But that's a bit of a cheat for a 'First Card', so let's see what was inside the pack that came inside a blister pack with that purple card.

Sweet! I got that New Guy that hit all those Home Runs for the Mets last year. I mean, that has to be good, even though I already have like 3-4 cards of him from last year and this year that look just like this one. 

Oh, wait? Wasn't that guy on the cover of Series One packs? How could he be my First Card in Series Two, too? I guess I will have to read these action image baseball cards a little more closely.

Oh, well, I always manage to find things I like in a brand new series of Topps Baseball cards, like a cool blue glove:

The Topps gaze does seem to like Walker Buehler, regardless of glove. Spiffy gloves do always jump out at me, and perhaps they look even better on a Night Card:

That card supplies a good trivia question to maybe win a bar bet, if we can ever go back in bars. First Elvis to play for an expansion team? Nope. That might depend on how you define 'expansion' perhaps. No, sometimes there is nothing quite like discovering new young baseball players, via baseball cards, to make a baseball fan feel a little old sometimes. Elvis Luciano is the first player to appear in Major League Baseball that was born in the 21st Century - 2-15-00, as Topps kindly informs us on the back of this card. Thanks, Topps, thanks. Nice card though.

I also like special hats:

That's the Cardinals' special Home Sunday cap with the single Redbird on it. I like seeing it on Cards' cards; this isn't even the first Wainwright card to feature it. And those cool socks, yeah, I like those too:

Actually what I like best about that card is not the 2nd example of the snazzy socks, but the way we can see Dexter's eyes focused on the incoming fly ball. That crisp detail, along with being able to see a complete baseball player, In Action, is quite probably made possible by the nameplate being vertical on the side there. That is to this design's credit; now just imagine this card without so much grey space and also with the interlocking STL logo being something other than white-on-grey, like, say, white-on-red, as on their regular everyday caps.

I do like captured motion on baseball cards though, and as with the Luciano card, and also that Fowler card, a player shown with a foot off the ground always supplies a great sense of watching live Baseball:

I have also always liked how a seating rail in the stands can really positively contribute to the overall set of lines in a baseball card image, well, sometimes, at least:

Cards like that one have been amusing me for several years now. By 'like that one' I mean a Dodgers RC issue. Series One had 2 such cards lighting up the $ signs in the eyes of the purchasers of the lottery tickets, err, the packs of baseball cards. Hey, look, here comes another one:

I dunno, not sure 'Garlick' is the best baseball name I have ever come across. I wonder what his Player's Weekend Nickname card will reveal, some day? If he actually appears on such a card some day. The Dodgers line-up has been so stacked for so long now, I sometimes have to wonder what is the point of Topps sending me so many Dodgers rookie cards, series after series.

At least Dodgers cards always have that classic red white & blue baseball look, so those 2 cards will look presentable in the RC binder at least, even if I never hear of these 2 players ever again. I just wish the high draft picks my team makes could hit bushels of Home Runs in the Minors the way obscure Dodgers draft picks can.

Oh well, sometimes I do get a second chance to see anonymous RC players again in a subsequent series, like this player:

Sadly, Isiah is now down to just 2 positions as assigned by Topps there in the really small type, down one from the 3B/2B/C combo on his RC. I know it is wrong to make fun of someone's last name, but I like finding one of Kiner-Falefa's cards in packs, they always make me hungry and since I live so very very far from a working Middle Eastern restaurant, they also are always a tiny bit of motivation to just get un-lazy and make my own darn falafel, some day.

Now that card has a brand new feature down there in the corner, though it is hard to notice amidst all the colorful Catcher gear - an "Inaugural Season" logo for the Rangers' new stadium. I often feel for the Rangers fans, more particularly their baseball card collecting fans, as Brooklyn HQ frequently does an even worse job covering them than they do with my favorite team in Detroit. They both are regular contenders to be card #666 (though given to Colorado this year), and of course Topps completely punted the effort when they issued Series 1 with just one Texas Rangers card. Which, in classic Topps fashion, didn't have this special logo. I just hope they got it right on the blister pack issued Team Set cards, perhaps, the ones they would possibly sell in the spiffy new stadium....oh, wait. 2020 strikes again, sorry Texas. I did hear some interesting talk, now that live baseball analysis has returned, about the dimensions of that new park and how they favor the Pitchers now, rather than the Hitters, which will be quite a change in Arlington. On a team largely guided by Nolan Ryan, hmm, how could that happen?

That somewhat not-out-of-baseball-card-history - logo? stamp? icon? is not so noticeable on that particular card, down there in the right-hand corner. This year's design lifts the eyes up, and away from the bottom corner, as on this card:

With even the Cardinals on the uniform contributing to the great flow of lines in this image, making you ponder what will happen with that baseball your eyes end up on, the now famous RC logo becomes a bit lost all the way down there in the corner. This card is a good example of how captivating the baseball can be on a baseball card - it includes that special Sunday hat and a colorful glove, too, but all I can see when I look at this card is a great example of a Pitcher's grip on the baseball.

Overall that corner logo now is making me wonder what happens on a Rangers' RC, in Series Two at least. I guess I will have to rip some more packs to find out, perhaps.

One long-standing Series Two tradition returns, for players who changed teams but were not included in Series One:

The classic Road Grey PhotoShop job. 

Sometimes that is a bit less noticeable somehow -

- but overall I will always wish Topps would spring for a brand new photo taken in Spring Training for this recurring Topps Baseball checklist situation.

With the grey design this year, 'alternate' uniforms really improve a given single baseball card, like this one:

Romo always seems to get good cards, and he does seem excited to be spiffed out in Minnesota's Road Alternate duds. The Twins also have a Home Alternate uni -

I like that yellow bat knob there, will be watching to see one of those again on a card.

Ultimately though what I hope to find when ripping some packs of cards, finally listening to live Major League Baseball, is cards of my favorite team:

That's probably another PhotoShop job; recall the t-shirt sleeves on those last 2 cards. Schoop is well into a journey-ing type career now, but he did get the Tigers first hit of the season the other day and had a pretty good opening series overall.

My next Tigers card was a bit surprising -

- but only in terms of thinking like it was 2018, when Reyes was a Rule 5 pick who made it all the way through his first season in Detroit to 'stick' on the roster permanently. He really blossomed in 2019 and this pick proved to be shrewd indeed, as did this particular 'pull' from a pack of baseball cards, as Reyes just hit a home run while I was gazing upon his nifty horizontal card here.

5 packs, 3 Tigers:

That's the Tigers new closer, who also had a great opening series with 2 Saves already. This card, a bit less than the previous card, illustrates a little of what could have been on this design as you can partially see that the olde English "D" is blue on the uniform, and white on the cap. Topps always seems to favor the cap logo, even when the uni logo would make for a more colorful card.

I also like pulling cards of the opposing team while I am absorbing Major League action, and Topps came through for me with the Reds' Opening Day starter:

That's the "Turkey Red" insert, which appear one / pack, the now 16 card loose single pack, to be specific. Last year each loose pack held a "Superstars of Baseball" insert, which did not appear in other packaging configurations. Given how collation works in Topps products, and this style of unique inserts in the loose packs, they are becoming my preferred format to pick up a few new baseball cards. Especially when I can still get the Meijers blister packs with the purple cards.

I think Sonny Gray looks good in his new uniform; I never thought the pinstripes suited him, in several ways. At 5'10" he is not a typical starting Pitcher, and for whatever reason I always think the shorter players look smaller yet in a pinstripe uniform. The deal that brought him to Cincinnati was convoluted to say the least and prospect results on a couple other teams remain to be seen, but I think overall Cincy pushing some chips in to the center of the table with the Gray deal will make the NL Central that much more interesting the next few years.

These Turkey Red cards are starting to grow on me:

Even though they are a grey border insert in a grey set of baseball cards, the always colorful backgrounds and that crisp faux-inset image border just make these cards:

Classy.

I am fairly sure I have seen this image of Lou Gehrig on a baseball card before, though I don't specifically collect his new issue cards. But I am also quite certain the image has never been melded with an artsy sunset background like that. Thus, I am starting to think a set of these classic cards of classic players might look pretty nice on a binder page:

Oh, wait. All-time Hall of Famers, current stars, & ... Rookies I've never heard of. So much for a desire to complete that set; probably these Turkey Red inserts are destined for Nifty Nine(s) status in my collection. Especially since I have more than enough collecting efforts under way to absorb too much of my scarce extra dollars, anyway.

So though each loose pack I might buy will deliver me another Turkey Red insert card, the packs do also contain examples of the other inserts in Series Two, like this one:

Boo-Yah!

Can't go wrong with a new Willie McCovey card and as a sucker for 70s 'flair', I think I will be looking into these a bit more. And maybe these, too:

I like/don't like how that particular card recalls the randomly sterile design efforts on Topps baseball cards in the 2010s - hexagons? Really? But I collected a lot of baseball cards in the 2010s and enjoyed following the game of baseball a bit more closely than usual all through that decade, so I look forward to checking out more of this insert checklist.

A Topps Baseball set and summer time often mean: a contest card -

And that is a pretty darn good baseball card in it's own right, right there. I barely have time to blog with y'all so I doubt I will be trying out the Home Run Challenge any time soon, or really, ever. But at least I will enjoy seeing the cards for it this year, as it is starting to look like a few more packs of this stuff will fall in the grocery cart again, presuming I have some luck with the 2020 retail baseball card challenge, which is on a whole 'nother level from previous years and years of collecting baseball cards.

Sometimes I wonder if my decision to like/not like an insert set might depend on the player I first see on one. That certainly didn't hurt with that cool Willie McCovey card I pulled. On this one -

- that's not the issue as I like Pedro Martinez well enough, particularly these days when I am randomly fortunate enough to catch some of his commentary on TV. But overall I am not always that interested in WAR stats, so I doubt I will be keeping any more of these. I prefer straight stats to 'new formula' stats, and with a fair bit of irony, this card did pleasingly tell me that Pedro's season in the year 2000, which generated the 11.7 WAR being celebrated here, also featured a 0.737 WHIP stat, which is the All-Time Record.

& that's why I keep buying baseball cards. I like pondering WHIP on the backs of cards, a regular stat feature of Topps Baseball cards now, but I was unfamiliar with that minor tidbit of baseball info.

I will leave you with a final 'insert' - one that is generally expected to be found when one buys packs of Topps Baseball cards - the Topps Gold. This one doesn't excite me; "Gold" can go a lot of ways on these cards depending on design, and just how the "Gold" is formulated. On this example here, I am having a hard time not thinking of it as a Padres card. The absurdly white edges of the should-be-in-shadow Rays logo 'shopped onto it are quite distracting, and the "Gold" is a bit dark for my tastes:

I picked up 5 packs to open the 2020 season, such as it is; these fall 1:8 packs this year, which is surely a pretty low ratio compared to years past. But that indicates a lot of people are buying Topps Baseball cards these days, and overall, that is a pretty heartening fact to me, in a year when we can use all such heartening things more than ever; most especially these brand new Topps Baseball cards.

Backs in the day

Well I have certainly been looking forward to ripping this particular 'pack' of cards, that is for sure.

1971 marked a bit of a turning point for baseball cards; most any one interested enough in baseball cards to be reading an obscure baseball card blog already knows all that. The Munson card, etc., etc.

This then begged a certain question - where would Topps put the 'historically correct' cards in the Heritage version of the set? Clearly there would be a take on the Munson card; the Lowell Palmer / Pat Neshek card in 1970 / 2019 Heritage made that plain enough.

But for some time now, Topps has been adding the "value" that the Lottery Ticket Scratchers, err, "collectors" demand in their boxes of baseball cards by including a certain totally a-historical card in Heritage sets: the super short printed / photo variation "Action" cards.

Would the historical styled cards just be issued as deliberately super short printed cards? Or might they be just issued as part of the 100 card "short print" portion of the checklist, which no longer has any correlation to the issue sequence &/or basic quantity made of the historical sets, only some of which had exceptionally scarce cards usually referred to as "high numbers."

So....let's rip the pack.

First card, best card? Well, this was the first bit of baseball card I could see as I opened the pack. Given the current news in MLB, I thought it was pretty cool to see this particular card, first, sorta. And this was quite surprising to me, because although I own very few 1971 Topps Baseball cards, the relatively sparse info backs weren't ones that particularly made me think - yeah, I'm gonna buy some 2020 Heritage and read all those dark card backs.

And what's that I see down in the left corner? A fleck of white? My uber-valuable baseball card is already ruint, before I even get to take it to the bank. Thanks, Topps.

This particular card back is a bit of a classic effort by Topps - talk up something that can be seen in a picture of a baseball player, and then no way, no how, use such a picture on a baseball picture card that might match the text. Oh, well.

But this was a nice surprise, and an initial answer to my key question: this certainly appears to be a picture from a Major League Baseball game. You won't see a back wall like that on a spring training field. There is no way to be sure on all that, but this is a nice portrait card that is probably also a live action shot, and this is not from the Short Print portion of the checklist, nor is this a special value added 'Action' card; those have a printed text notation of that word right on the back of the card now. Topps 1, Card Cynic 0.

But let's move on to the card that was on the 'top' of the stack of baseball cards, i.e. the one facing right-side up:

These particular cards make me so mad I want to fling them away from me like a frisbee, which is why I will hold that Fiers card in my thoughts of First Card in this product. I think we are up to about 5 years of seeing Red Sox players standing on this exact same spot on so many of their baseball cards. We all know that 1960s sets, and large portions of 1970s sets, were created with photos taken at Spring Training. But those original sets didn't feature entire teams of players all standing on the same spot to have their picture taken, and definitively did not feature that photo composition strategy for years on end. The Red Sox + the bushes has been running for some time now; I actually preferred the run of years when their players stood by a chain link fence, which made for a more menacing card. But some other teams, such as the Tigers, have had repeat backdrops running on for quite a few more years than these (in)famous Red Sox shrubs. And don't even get me started on the summation of the 2019 Eddie Rosario card and the 2020 Eddie Rosario card, which I have seen elsewhere already. Topps 1, Card Cynic -1.

This card creates an instant baseball question: how good will the White Sox be this year? This is what I want from a pack of baseball cards. I particularly like the back of this card:

Now that is how to do a Leaders card. Don't mess around, just give me the top 50 players for that stat. Simple, to the point, very, very informative. I would very much like to see this straight up copied in a Topps Baseball set in the 2020s; Top 10 is nice, but Top 50 is nicer. Topps 2, Card Cynic -1.

You can always tell, in a Topps Baseball set, which teams are down in the cellars of the Leagues. Simply by how many of their cards you pull featuring players you have never heard of. It seems like just yesterday I was adding yet another Chance Cisco card to my pile of "should I save this?" baseball cards. I think, for those Cisco cards, Topps just answered the question for me. Plus, I like a good old fashioned blurry empty seats card, an image that can pretty much only be seen on Topps baseball cards, and is also one that I don't associate with 59 other Orioles Heritage/Archives cards from the last oh so many years. This card also makes me look forward to finding a Giants, O's, Marlins, or Pirates player wearing their Home Alternate uniform. Topps 3, Card Cynic -1.

Meh. But, actually, not really. This card will help me quite a bit in considering the Houston Astros, going forward - none of these players could have been involved in the recent cheating, for one, so they will give me some tiny bit of bright spot to look forward to in Astros box scores. I also had a good friend named Rogelio, once upon a time, though he was from Mexico. That makes me always root for the Mexican players in MLB, so it is a bit of bummer that Señor Armenteros there is from Cuba. But I will root for him anyway. Also of note on this card is the home of that imposing looking young third baseman there, but I will leave that for you to discover on the back of your own baseball card. Maybe, he will end up on your team soon enough, considering that a Rookie has little chance of taking a spot from a young almost-MVP, even a young, now hated almost-MVP. Topps 4, Card Cynic -1.

I have pretty much already pulled this card in a previous pack of Topps Baseball cards, and that made me mad.

This is where the laziness of the Topps Photo Day shots really wear out collectors - when you also collect Archives. Which is unfortunate, because players with a big smile always make for good baseball cards, so I like this particular player for that reason and I do want to collect his baseball cards. This particular back drop for Braves cards goes back a solid ten years or so. Topps 4, Card Cynic -3.

Plenty of Giants cards from their "spot." Topps 4, Card Cynic -4. I am going to quit posting these cards. Note that is just a white team name, not a deliberate artificial scarcity value added card, which feature team names printed in silver, for you to chase and give away your money for not much, really.

Now we are starting to cook with some gas. A nice bright live action baseball card, with some really strong lines to the image, too, though only the best we can get for a rare Ball Boy cameo in the ever blurrier 21st century. And my first Tigers, card, sort of, though Cron only has a one year deal with the Tigers, who are fielding 5 such veterans this year all on one year deals, which makes rooting for their results about completely pointless.

On the Cron card I don't quite understand the off-set placement of the facsimile signature; one of the historical-set-mimic-deliberate-errors this year features a poorly placed sig like this one, on the Yordan Alvarez Rookie Cup card. But there is no magic word 'error' in the official spot just above the player picture on the back of the card, so this card is worth essentially 0¢. But, this is the kind of card I was hoping to pull from this pack, and indeed, will be keeping in a binder page prison for all eternity, just to look at some contemporary players on a vintage design.

I will update the score methodology in the pack now - Pose 4, Action 2 (recall Fiers card).

mmmm, so thirsty. I bought this pack of baseball cards instead of a six pack, but I do like King of Beers cards, even though I hardly ever drink that beer, or even buy beer any more, as currently I would have to choose between beer and baseball cards in life due to a # of swings and misses at work, so I am starting to have a love/hate relationship going with this card. But it will have a binder page slot some day too, though not with other 2020 Heritage cards. Pose 4, Action 3.

I think this card is probably a night card. What is also nice about this card is that Allard was traded to Texas last summer. But Topps didn't mess around with simply photoshopping Kolby into a T-for-Texas ball cap and a road grey uni. Or maybe they have updated their PhotoShop license and are now much, much better at such efforts. Still, another type of card I am looking for in my Topps Baseball sets. New team, new uniform (Road Alternate, no less - very nice on vintage designs), new bit of player bio on the back. +1 in the Topps score above. That Greek symbology on the bottom of the card though - what's up with that? Pose 4, Action 4.

I like this posed card quite a bit. A good smile makes a good baseball card. It has a familiar Spring Training vibe to it, but I haven't seen this photo spot 592 times before, neither. And I like those nice perfectly landscaped small trees showing off their Spring colors, too - a perfect card to pull this time of year, writing a blog post and listening to a Spring Training broadcast (I recommend absorbing a bunch of those this week, just in case). I also particularly like that Topps oh so carefully placed the signature reproduction; maybe that is a good sign for other cards in other sets, going forward, as otherwise Topps semi-routinely has players sign their names on cards right over dark uniform, etc., spots in the image, and they didn't exactly ace this detail on that C.J. Cron card. On this card, someone deep in the Topps baseball card mines showed they still care about the final result, on-card. So another +1 for Topps vs. Cynic, though I skipped over 3 other posed cards. Pose 8, Action 4.

Normally, a cap-less baseball card indicates a 1960s Topps Baseball card and they are a bit on the rare side outside of that decade, 'cepting of course their Heritage repros. But also normally, a cap-less baseball card indicates a posed card. Not so here. Also probably a night card - night cards and 1971 Topps Baseball - an interesting combo. I will be watching (my baseball cards).

That particular image of the card amuses me a little; mine is far more well centered but I could not get it to scan straight without the instant cupping of brand new Topps Baseball cards making for crooked scans. Finally I gave up and borrowed someone else's scan from eBay. But that particular copy certainly has more authentic vintage appearance than mine does, though none of my vintage cards have ever curled up and refused to lay flat on a scanner bed the way so many of my brand new baseball cards do lately.

I don't know much about Josh VanMeter, but the Reds are expected to possibly 'make some noise,' as they say, in the NL Central this year, so seeing their new baseball players is why I buy baseball cards. One intriguing little factoid about VanMeter I did just learn is this: he has exactly zero Bowman baseball cards already created. Must be a walk-on. Perhaps, future baseball cards will enlighten me. Pose 8, Action 5.

I am thinking this might be the first baseball card that says "Mad Max" on it, so straight into my little Nifty Nine collection of Max Scherzer cards this will go; and I expect it might stay there over time as though I like Max, I don't really need more than 9 of his nifty baseball cards to keep for all-time.

I am guessing Topps is having one of their mis-adventures with filters here, trying to give a vintage feel for how early 1970s Topps was able to handle cards photographed at night, or something. So perhaps a newer, better, stronger 'Mad Max' card will some day displace this one. I pulled one other NLCS card in this pack and it looks just like this one; I think on balance I would rather just have an un-processed image, whether that matches up to the vintage set or not. Because the image processing is rather obvious, and deliberate here.

But what I really like about this card is once again on the back:

Again I like the simple, old school take on the results of a baseball game, although this almost-complete box score gives the Pitchers exactly bupkis here, outside of their At Bats at least. I was writing about a 2013 Postseason card on the Sea Turtle blog the other day; this vintage Topps approach is far superior. Given how many cards Topps makes these days, what I would like to see in a future Topps Baseball set for a post-season card is simply a nice, detailed box score, as they are created today. There is plenty of room on the back of a 2.5" x 3.5" baseball card for that, particularly with 21st century printing technology and an ability to handle any font at any size. Such an effort _could_ fit, and this card back does have a lot of wasted space. But overall, I will quite a bit look forward to pulling some World Series cards from 2020 Heritage and reading those, rather than the ones I have yet to see in 2020 Series One.

No score update for that card; I pulled 5 cards of the 20 that were either Leaders, multi-Rookies, or PostSeason cards which aren't relative to the pose/action mix. The actual final was Pose 10, Action 5, Tattoos 6 — a bit of a Tattoo hot pack, this one.

And I did not pull any Inserts or Short Prints or Super Short Print "Action" cards - just 20 base cards - when was the last time you purchased a Topps package of some sort and found Zero inserts?

So that basic mix of cards is some pretty good news for me, and I will kind of collect some 2020 Topps Heritage. The basic news on the product remains the same: 400 base cards, 100 short prints. Which is something created by Topps changing to 100 card sheets in about 2015; having 100 short prints probably makes production quite a bit easier than 425 base + 75 sp.

But that makes for one heckuva expensive set of baseball cards, for this decidedly non-professional collector. So I already know I just don't have an option to attempt to collect this entire set, really, given how much it would cost to track down 100 short prints. I would say Heritage is perhaps a "mid-end" baseball card product, rather than a "low end" product which I normally collect due to cost. Though I have always liked 1971 Topps Baseball cards, the actual result of the creation of the 2020 Topps Heritage set finds me just, kind of complacent, I guess.

Ultimately, the repetitive nature of a large portion of the cards kind of helps me out - I don't really need page after page of the same card, over and over again, so I am not particularly disappointed that I can't actually collect this set. But at the same time, the amount of action cards sprinkled through the checklist - (the Munson card is indeed recreated, though I have yet to see who has the Topps Rookie Cup for a Catcher this year) - well, I will have something to look forward to when I casually add a pack of this to my grocery cart over the next year or so. And perhaps as I look to collect a little more carefully in my future, prioritizing cards based on how many binders of baseball cards I really want to own, the crazy nature of 'added value' and manufactured scarcity and the way so many of my fellow hobbyists really collect $$ signs, not baseball cards, well perhaps in Heritage now that works to my advantage. I can take what I need from a few nice memory making cards, and leave the rest. Which should probably work fine for the Psychedelic Tombstones next year, too, particularly as all the live baseball action will be corralled in a subset.

But I only have four years to save up for the Heritage set I really, really want...