2012 Topps Heritage Baseball Box Break Recap And Review

Set builders rejoice, 2012 Topps Heritage Baseball is here.  This year’s release is based on the cards of 1963 Topps Baseball.   With some new parallels to chase and different configurations of relics to pull, there is a lot to collect here.  We've provided a complete visual checklist of this year's error cards as well as color swap, JFK story inserts and image swap cards. You can use the links provided to check them out.  Willie Mays and Ken Griffey, Jr. have been added to the autograph checklist but most will be busting boxes of Heritage for the set building.

This set falls under our classification of trading cards.  There are multiple retail configurations and hobby boxes so Heritage is accessible to all.   Again, no gum this year.  Hobby boxes come with 24-9 card packs and 1 Autograph or Relic per box

Here are some of the cards we pulled from our box.

Base Set

 Albert Pujols, front and back

 Derek Jeter, Justin Verlander, Evan Longoria

 Don Mattingly, 2012 Rookie Stars, Joey Votto

Dustin Ackley, Veteran Masters Mariano Rivera & Joe Giradi, Brian Wilson

 Joe Mauer, NL Batting Leaders, Starlin Castro

 Ryan Howard, J.P. Arencibia, Matt Kemp

High Numbered SPs

 Jimmy Rollins, Omar Infante

 CC Sabathia, Josh Willingham, Shane Victorino

 Jonny Venters, Todd Helton, Brandon Belt

Chrome Parallels #/1963

 Gio Gonzalez, Jose Reyes, Miguel Cabrera

 New Age Performers Inserts

 Derek Jeter

New Flashbacks Inserts

 Martin Luther King, Jr., Penn Station

Baseball Flashbacks Inserts

 Early Winn, Willie Mays

Then & Now Inserts

 Eddie Mathews & Jose Bautista, Sandy Koufax & Clayton Kershaw

 Topps Stick-Ons Inserts

 Chris Carpenter, Mike Stanton, Evan Longoria

 Image Swap SPs

Josh Hamilton

1963 Advertising Panel

 Edwin Jackson, Blake DeWitt & Kendrys Morales

The Hit

Dan Haren Clubhouse Collection Memorabilia

Overall Look

The 1963 Topps Baseball design is attractive enough so this cards look really good.  The flashback and then & now inserts look great.  No to sure about the New Age Performers design, but it is a small part of the collection. The stickers are fun. The Clubhouse Collection relics are a little vanilla, but the Image Swap relics work well.  As usual, the on card autos look fantastic.

Quality and Variety of Players and Subsets.

500 base cards is a really good number so the checklists here are well done.  For a retro product, the Auto checklist is great.  

Do the hits hold up?

Aaron and Koufax On-Card autos return.  Add to that Willie Mays and fan favorites like Willie McCovey, Minnie Minosa and Orlando Cepeda. Coin cards add some great variety to the mix. 

Will you want to collect them all?

As usual, Heritage is the premiere release for set builders.   With 75 high numbered SPs to acquire, just building the base set is a challenge.  But collectors are happy to take this project on.  Based on the 1963 release of Topps Baseball, this year’s Heritage didn't have nearly as many anomalies and printing errors as were found in last year's 1962 based set so Topps added the swap cards, color and image which starts to make putting together a master set quite daunting.  

Rating

4 1/2 out of 5

2012 Topps Heritage Baseball maintains its place as in the upper echelon of set building for Baseball Card collectors.


Review box provided by Topps