Heritage Galore: Card Show Recap #7

After buying a hobby box of 2018 Topps Heritage earlier this week, and having good luck with it, I decided to move forward with my plans to collect the entire 2018 Topps Heritage set. My first stop would be the card show, because I know that's where the prices would be the fairest. Furthermore, today's show would allow me to get my first look at this stuff at the card show.

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned in the beginning. The show's card case breaker who I've bought not just Heritage, but many other cards from for years and years, was sold out of all Heritage inserts and SPs (yes you heard that right). He told me that someone bought them personally from him before he could sell them at the show. Therefore, all he had left were a few relic cards and a couple of rookie stars. I knew this would be a setback, but I also knew that someone else at the show had to have some Heritage, and I was right.

This dealer had rows of Heritage cards marked at certain prices, including SPs which were $2 each. I picked up what I needed of his SPs which ended up being 10 to go with the 8 that I already had. There are a lot of sky backgrounds like there were last year which makes a card like the Brandon Phillips SP even more impressive, because of it's different background and nice bright red jersey. 

The dealer had a solid selection of short-prints, but it was the inserts that were the best price out of everything. The New Age Performers set is one that I want to build very quickly, simply because of the fantastic design. These inserts were available for $1 each, including the Clint Frazier which I expected to be a bit more considering he's a rookie. The other 3 (Altuve, Bryant, and Seager) are the usual suspects in this insert set.

The next of the insert cards available for $1 each were the Deckle Edge cards. There weren't that many of these available, however, I was able to get 2 Red Sox players from the set, Mookie Betts, and Chris Sale. Rafael Devers does have a Deckle Edge and New Age Performer card, but I haven't seen them at the show nor in any online break videos I've seen so I'm guessing people are holding onto them or charging a lot to buy them.

The final Deckle Edge card is from the division-rival New York Yankees team that looks ready and eager to make the World Series and continue the impressive legacy of the franchise. I'm nervous to see this Yankees team this year, especially since the Red Sox have to play them so often. However, we've seen super-teams in baseball fail before (2011 Red Sox, 2012 Angels), so there's really no guarantee that Stanton will work out in New York.

I took a quick break from all the inserts to pick up this card for $1 as well. The black border cards are limited to 50 copies, just like the blue borders were last year. And while Jose Bautista is no longer a big name, I thought this card was way too good of a deal to pass up.

I then returned to the insert cards in order to pick up what I could from the 3 most rare insert sets in Heritage, beginning with Then & Now. These fall at about 1 per box, and it's very hard to defy the odds and end up with more than one. This is why going to the show to buy more expensive inserts is such a good idea because despite them being 1 per box on average, the show allows you to pick them up instantly for a good price.

This vendor had a surprisingly large amount of each insert set, suggesting that he likely broke a whole case of the product. I made sure to look through the News Flashbacks to find the ones I was so eager to find, and sure enough, they were there. Apollo 11 and Woodstock along with the rest of these News Flashbacks were available for either 1 or 2 dollars each (depended on the card). Like the Then & Now cards, these are also 1 per box on average...

and so are the Baseball Flashbacks, the last of the inserts from the set I picked up. All the players in this insert set are big names, no matter the year. But considering how collectible of a player Roberto Clemente can be, I knew this card would be very hard to find elsewhere.

I didn't want to go completely overboard, so I passed on quite a few other cards such as chrome cards and other base cards for the base set that would add up in time. However, the last 4 cards I got were available for just too good of a price to pass up.

The chrome refractors are about 1 in ever 60 hobby packs and are numbered out of 569. This can make them tough pulls and pretty valuable cards. This is why I was so surprised to see these pretty big names available for 2 dollars each. Each player has something about him that I like, and to add to my Heritage chrome cards at a price of 2 dollars each is a pretty great deal. I know they aren't necessarily part of the set I'm collecting, but they are numbered to a pretty small number and are nice looking cards. Plus, they do an excellent job of showing off yet another part of Heritage that is so well done and helps me to get excited about all the possible cards from the Heritage set that are out there to collect.