You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever

Every year, I buy a pack or two of Topps baseball cards, just to see what they’re up to. At the risk of sounding like a GOML (“Get off my lawn”) grump, I firmly believe the cards were “better” when I was a kid. Sure, the photography and production methods have improved, the colors are brighter, the action shots more exciting, but there’s something charming and nostalgic about the earlier outputs.

When I say I buy some cards, I mean the “regular” ones, not the seemingly hundreds of other sets out there. But when I saw that the Topps Heritage set was a throwback to the 1970 series, one of my all-timer favorites, I decided to go all in. Perhaps that’s because it came out after the Mets had their miracle year. Perhaps it was because I was 13 and at the height of my collecting phase, before adolescence and all it implies hit me.

So I went on Ebay just to look around and chanced up this year’s Heritage for what I considered a reasonable price in an auction that had less than 90 seconds left. Long story short, I won and the package arrived yesterday.

Image result for topps heritage 2019 checklists

Image result for topps 1970 box

The call-back is quite nice. There are a few cards devoted to the post-season which mirror the original, as well as a series of “all-stars,” both ostensibly under the auspices of The Sporting News. Is TSN even a thing anymore? But while the design is the same, there’s some things that seemed a bit off, not the least of which is that this is a “base set” of only 400 cards (as opposed to more than 700 in the 1970 version). Although this is meant as an homage, the look struck me as a bit forced. Who are they trying to attract that they reached into the vault for that look? Obviously you had to had lived through the original to really appreciate it. (See below.)

A couple of other things that struck me. With all due respect, these players mean nothing to me. By 1970 I had been following the game and collecting for a few years and had picked out my favorites, so they did mean something. Also, do kids even like baseball cards anymore? I mean they’re so static. They’re like books, and those of us of a certain age know what’s happened to anything that actually printed on paper. Heck, that’s one of the reasons I now work at Trader Joe’s instead of at the newspaper.

But I guess when all is said and done I’ll still “play” with my new set. But how? Do I leave them as is, in numerical order? Or do I divvy them up into teams, as I did when I was 13? One thing I noticed that’s different: The “double-zero” cards (100, 200, etc.) were reserved for the superstars of the game, with the cards ending in “50” a lower level of player, and a zero lower still, but yet prominent. I wonder if anyone working at Topps still recalls that plan, because

100 – Masahiro Tanaka
200 – ALCS Game Three
300 – Zack Wheeler
400 – Astros Rookie Stars

Really? These are the standouts for 2018?

Here are a couple of links about the set from Beckett.com:

Whatever “busting” means.

And it seems it’s not longer enough just to get the set; to be a completist you need to have all the variations as well. So I somehow feel I’m missing something. One thing hasn’t changed in all these years: I’m still impatient. “Back in the day,” the cards came out in series, one per month. Once the month was over, if you didn’t have all the cards, you were pretty much SOL unless you had a buddy who could trade with you, because actually buying them from a store — and obviously on-line — wasn’t a thing yet. So why can’t I buy the whole damn thing, with all the cards/inserts/extras, in one shot? (See? GOML.)

One thing that did amuse me: from the first article

Some elements are so tied to 1970, you might not get the full context if you weren’t collecting at the time (or even alive).

Another was this reference:

Pat Neshek’s Homage to 1970 Topps Lowell Palmer

The nod to 1970 on Pat Neshek’s base card might totally slip by you unless you’re very familiar with the original set. It plays directly off 1970’s Lowell Palmer card.

Both cards are #252 on their respective checklists. More noticeable are the sunglasses.

Neshek worked with Topps to make the card happen. But the personal significance runs even deeper for the Phillies pitcher.

Finally, the above passage mentions that “Both cards are #252 on their respective checklists.” Except the 2019 set — at least the one that arrived at my doorstep — doesn’t have any checklists. Boo.