So I finished breaking the boxes of Heritage last night while watching ESPN’s 30 for 30 on Jimmy V and the 1983 NC State team.  If you haven’t watched it yet, you really should.  I’m one of those people that can’t get in to much of what ESPN does and haven’t watched Sportscenter since Olbermann was pushed out.  I feel like their programming is only slightly above MTV these days.  The guys at Grantland and Bill Simmons have done a phenomenal job on the 30 for 30 series though and i never miss an episode, including the shorts on the Grantland site.  Opening packs of cards and watching sports on TV way past your bedtime is a little treat for me these days.  Our 6 month old boy is really moving around a lot these days and requires a ton of attention and love during the daytime hours.  I have no problem doing, but it’s nice to have a break at night.  PLUS i have an amazing wife who gives our son tons of love and unfortunately is tasked with the onerous responsibility of getting him to sleep at night.

As i mentioned in the initial review post of this years Heritage, i am a big fan of this set and love putting it together each year.  In the past couple of years, Heritage has fallen out of favor due overproduction and too many SP’s which makes getting the base cards somewhat easy but difficult to complete the whole set.  The boxes i opened were pretty nice and i noticed quite a bit of SP’s that i may post in the future, but i wanted to show off the hits that really caught my eye.  I’ve heard that Heritage was going to add more autograph hits this year and i was lucky enough to pull 4 in the boxes i had.  Not only did i get 4 cards, but i got a good haul of quality players.  Nothing jaw dropping, but nice cards no less.

And there they are…

The first one is David Freese, and he looks as if he is about to get his DMV photo taken.

Next, Mr. Paul Goldschmidt of the Arizona Diamondbacks.  When i was looking at graduate schools i was trying to decide between the University of Oregon and Arizona State.  This was around the time the D’backs won the World Series and i thought it would be great to live in a major league city, but just couldn’t deal with living in a dessert since i grew up in hot, humid San Antonio for so many years.  So i chose Oregon.  Had i chosen ASU, i would probably be a D’backs fan and be super excited about this card.  But, i am only excited.  He is one of the young up and coming stars and could be a big home run guy in the future.

Next was Lance Lynn.  My second Cardinal.  Honestly, i would have missed this card were it not for the hand numbered 43/64 in the top right.  The red ink auto pretty much disappears into his glove and with my color deficiencies, i can barely make out the Topps Certified Autograph Issue on the name stripe at the bottom.  This could have been done better Topps.

The last autograph is pretty awesome.  Maury Wills.  The auto is nice and placed in a great spot on the card.  You can tell this was done by a professional, someone who has signed a million autos in his lifetime.  This autograph is actually a long time coming for me.  I believe in 1989 i went to a show in Austin, TX where he was supposed to be signing autographs for a small fee.  This was around the same time when i was doing the through the mail autos and thought it would be great to get a veteran player added to my collection…but he never showed up.  I was pretty upset, not Sheldon Cooper vs. Wil Wheaton upset, but upset no less.  I had an 8×10 and baseball all ready for him to sign.  I never found out why he didn’t show up, but attempted to mail the baseball to him a few months later and never recieved anything.  Chalked to experience up as a failure and moved on with my life.  Now we have come full circle.

The next few cards are the annual jersey cards from the Clubhouse Collection series.  There were significantly less cards that i pulled than in years past.  Which i am ok with as these cards seem to be uninspired and a little boring.  Here’s hoping Topps does something different with these next year and maybe does larger swatches or better photos?  I don’t know, but something different would be great.

that’s all, thanks.