Some street date Heritage

For the first time ever I was able to pick up three rack packs of Heritage at Wal-mart, on the street date. They're usually at least three or four days if not a week behind. So it was a pleasant surprise for me when I saw them there on the rack waiting for me. I won't go through every base card I received but suffice it to say, I think I like this year's edition of Heritage. That may or may not have anything to do with what I pulled...

Here's a sampling of what I got.

One thing I like about Heritage is the abundance of non-action photos.

I have beard envy.

Fredi! Incidentally, my only Braves card.

The only short print I pulled and probably the worst miss-cut I've gotten out of a recent Topps pack. Maybe this is an intentionally unintentional throwback to all the miss-cuts back in the vintage era. I must add though that while none of the regular base cards were cut this badly, a large portion of them were noticeably off center. Anybody else running into this?

Puddin pops

Interesting blurb about this card. The back shows the top 10 in wins from 1965 and 2013. In '13 Scherzer was the only MLB pitcher with at least 20 wins. In '65 there were nine. I guess even with the resurgence of lower scoring games in the last few years this shows how dominant pitchers used to be.

So..an insert set that is not rare..that only contains four cards? (According to Cardboard Connection) Well I guess there will be a ton of dupes of these floating around.

Crash

Bangarang!!

I seem to have some luck pulling ROA cards after I pulled that Bill Verdon auto from '12 awhile back. Topps must have added more subjects and had them sign more though since now these are only 1:150 rack packs. 

Now about Mr. Yellen above. An All-Star, he was not. He pitched a total of 26 innings with a 6.86 ERA for the Houston Colt .45s in 1963 and 1964. I guess Topps is starting to have to dig deep to find guys that played in the early/mid 60's that are still alive, no matter how short their stay in the show was. What I do find really cool about this card is that Yellen played for the Houston COLT .45'S. Not the Astros as the card says. Now I understand that this card looks the same as Yellen's 1965 Topps card which also said "Astros" on it since that was the year that they changed their name. However Yellen never pitched for the team under that name. Oh well. Still pretty cool I think to have an auto of a guy who played for the Colt .45s.

I will definitely be picking up more Heritage this year. Two thumbs up so far, Topps.