Notes from the Retail Shelves: 2022 Topps Heritage

 

For the past few years, Heritage has been kind of weird for me.

I grew up with my dad's card collection, and his collection began with stuff from 1971 Topps, and featured sporadic stuff from the early 70s until he finally got fully into it in 1975. So designs like the 1971 and 1973 design are ones I was familiar with as a kid, thumbing through his collection and sorting by year and such. 

And now...the Heritage sets have caught up with the stuff that my dad collected. And so we're getting new players on these designs. That's a little bit weird.

Especially this year's. 1973 Topps doesn't feel like a Heritage-worthy set to me yet. It's a perfectly solid 70s set that has a lot of nostalgia and fun photography around it. And...here's modern Topps doing its own version of that. It's a little weird finally getting packs of this. 

It is, after all, Heritage, and that's usually a fun set to find blasters of in the wild. Besides, I've got another two blasters coming thanks to a Topps order I made before I found actual retail stuff near me, so I'll rip more of it anyway.

Here now, my findings from a retail blaster of 2022 Topps Heritage:

Pack 1- Literally my first card of the blaster was this guy. So we're already starting on a high note.

This set...looks like a Heritage set. Mix of staged/matted photography and action stuff, just like 73, though here it's a bit more artificial. Actual stars showing up, like Giancarlo, Yadi and Mookie. Anderson is a guy that missed the Update cutoff, so this is nice. 

Pack 2- Tyler Wade seems very miffed about being in an Angels uniform now. I do like the variety of backdrops, from the tarp in Colorado to the practice field behind Bregman's. And I'll take a WS subset card, even if it is Altuve.

Pack 3- You see, this kind of photography I'll take. This looks like the 73 set. Even the recently-dropped Justin Upton looks awesome here. I also like the design of New Age Performers a lot.

Pack 4- And you can easily see the contrast between the posed shots and the more authentic throwback-esque action shots. Straw is the kind of 73 one I would try to recreate back in the early eras of the blog. Pivetta's as well, in a way.

Pack 5- The better end of the posed shots with these. Two much needed updated uniforms with Galvis and Lester, with Lester's being a career sendoff card.

Since I'm not building the set, I don't care too greatly about SPs, but this is a really nice shot of Aquino. 

Pack 6- Solid stuff all around, guys from both my teams, a nice Gallo Yanks one, and a great flashbacks card of Rod Carew. 

This was the best photo in the pack, though. Man, when they really go for the likeness, this set can be awesome.

Pack 7- A hero card with Vlad, another potential final sendoff with Gardy, and two really nice action shots. 

Pack 8- Beaty's is another SP, and he's not even a Dodger anymore. I like Haase's posed shot. Of course, that outfield De La Cruz one is fantastic, and I wish this set was more like that one than Beaty's. 

So, not exactly a super-entertaining blaster, with a generally average load of base and insert and such, but I do like this set, and I like the perks of the photography. It remains to be seen how long it will take for Topps to ship the blasters, though. Might be well into Series 2 season at this rate.