With the recent release of 2018 Topps Heritage still fresh in the minds of many collectors, I've decided to put together a side-by-side comparison between the recreated cards from the 1969 set, and original cards from Topps' last set of the 60's.
Topps has always done an excellent job of recreating nearly every element of the original sets when putting them into Topps Heritage. Whether it be the base set, league leaders, or combo cards, Topps usually recreates their sets pretty well. I didn't take that much notice of how well they did until completing this post so this post will be my first real look at how good of a job Topps really did.
Since Heritage is such a base-heavy set, replicating the base set to the best of their abilities should be Topps' number one priority, and it usually is. 2018 was no different as they did an excellent job modeling the base set after the 1969 design. I'm pretty certain they used the same team name color as the 1969 set as well as the same colored circle at the top of the card. The only difference I can notice is something a lot of other bloggers have touched on. The 1969 infielder cards positions use the number 3 to read 3rd base while the 2018 Heritage set spells out the whole phrase Third Baseman.
I had to find a way to sneak the Pilots into this set, and what better way than Lou Piniella's rookie stars card to show the basically identical look on the Rookie Stars cards. The Rookie Stars cards are pretty simple, so Topps had no trouble replicating them pretty well. I'm not entirely sure if the Heritage set says the player's position instead of just inf. to show infield positions, but a difference that small doesn't make all that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.
Is Stanton the new McCovey? Arenado the new Santo? Finally, is Ozuna the new Williams? No one knows for sure right now, but the point is that these 6 players were league leaders in RBI in their respective years. This helps to highlight how well Topps did in recreating the league leader cards like they've done in past seasons. This one happens to be an example of a recreated card that I cannot fault due to how it was recreated perfectly. I just find it interesting that they didn't need to trademark the NL in '69, but have to in 2018. Just a small detail highlighting how much the times have changed since the set came out.
The Sporting News All-Star cards were one of the most recognizable parts of the 1969 Topps set. The colorful cards were covered in small stars and had respective colors for each league. Red for the AL and green for the NL shown at the top of this post. The obvious difference is the change from "Sporting" News to "Topps" News. Once again, this highlights how times have changed since 1969, because of how Topps no longer affiliates themselves with The Sporting News. I can't say it makes a huge difference for me personally because every other detail on the cards is very well done, especially the black and white background showing an action-shot of each All-Star starter.
Combo cards are an iconic part of 1960's Topps baseball cards due to the clever titles at the top of each card as well as the interesting players that were chosen for the card. The 1969 combo cards are very simple, much like the set, so that allows Topps to do a great job at recreating yet another part of the set. So far, I've only seen 2 combo cards in 2018 Heritage (The Cubs one shown above and a Yankees one with Judge and Sanchez), but I'm hoping there are more out there because I don't know how much longer these combo cards lasted for in vintage baseball cards. Meaning there days in Heritage could be numbered.
The final, and possibly most famous part of the 1969 Topps set is the World Series highlight cards that take the form of a newspaper that Topps titled "World Series Special" back in 1969. Each detail was recreated flawlessly, from the title to the subtitle and the placement of game number and final score. Once again, Topps changed it from Sporting to Topps News, but the main focus of this card and the entire Heritage set is to make the players of today seem like they're in the set Topps is recreating. Overall, Topps was able to do an exceptional job of this in basically every element of 2018 Topps Heritage. Still, with some highly-detailed sets coming up in the next few years of Heritage, Topps will have somewhat of a harder job recreating complicated sets like 1972 and than they did with the 1969 set.
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