Birthday Blaster - Heritage High Numbers and U&H

This is what my birthday gift from my close friend Tom showed up in. I expected nothing less than awesome on the inside, and he didn't disappoint.

Within the billowy pink and white tissue paper I found a blaster of Topps Heritage High Numbers and Topps Updates & Highlights. These packs are actually quite fun to rip. You get a couple U&H cards, as well as a bunch of Heritage High numbers.

Now, in theory, I'm not collecting the High Numbers, so if anyone out there needs any, I'll get them up on my For Trade Spreadsheet (Of Doom) sometime tonight.

I say 'in theory' because I might have found something I liked in the High Numbers. And yes, it's Chrome-y.



I came across this Chrome version, numbered 0086/1960, of Trevor Cahill. Up and comer for the Oakland Athletics. These cards in their chrome versions look super cool. I can't emphasize this enough.

This blaster was actually blessed with another Chrome rookie star of Koji Uehara.



And yet another of Brad Mills. This one, while looking a lot like the other two, is actually a slightly different color and numbered to 560 I believe. The color difference really comes through in the scan.



I really dig these cards. Is anyone else collecting the chrome versions of these Rookie Stars? I'd like to get my hands on a few more once I take a look at the checklist. I haven't spent a ton of time with Heritage this summer and I traded most of my base cards to JD late last summer. I'm hoping I'll be able to knock off a few more of his needs.

I do have a question for those of you who are collecting Heritage. Here's a shot of the backsides of a few cards. The third card in the picture is of J.A. Happ, and his card looks like the other 40 or so I pulled out of this blaster.



The other three cards have what looks to be a throwback backside with a more natural cardboard color look to them. Is this purposeful by Topps?

To round out this blaster, which I was very please with, I also found a Matt Holliday Clubhouse Collections jersey card.



As usual, if you've seen anything you like here, I love working out trades. I'm still trying to piece together Topps Series 2, if you can help.

Albert Pujols Chrome 2009 Topps Heritage

If my laptop here at work and my phone would cooperate the world could have a chance to see the Topps Heritage Albert Pujols Chrome card I pulled over lunch today (in all its crappy Moto Q cell camera glory). Numbered 1666 of 1960.

For now, just know that it happened and that I was happy.

That is all. Carry on.

2009 Topps Heritage

It's a beautiful Friday afternoon here in sunny, sunny Minnesota and I was inspired to take an extra long lunch to go out and grab a pack of cards.

Inspiration came directly from the Cardboard Junkie post I read sometime this morning about his favorite Topps Heritage pack from this year.

So let's preface this with I've never bought a pack of Topps Heritage in my life, but was intrigued by the old school design and the possibility to try out some new school baseball card gum. I see they protect the cards from the gum nowadays. Pfffffffffffft, I'll take the stains, that's character right there!

My first card was that of Kevin Youkilis #111

I also pulled #185 Kyle Kendrick, and apparently he's not a NASCAR driver like I pictured in my head. And there's no mention of it on the back of his card so its got to be true, right?

Then I started to pull cards directly related to my fantasy baseball team which made me happy. #32 Johnny Cueto (GV 55er) and Jay Bruce

After that I was rewarded with a Ryan Howard (GV 55er) and Ernie Banks then and now card. Surprisingly enough, the HR leader totals were very simliar for both 1960 and 2008.






Card #500 was a Billy Wagner Topps Magazine All-Star card



To continue the trend of big market players, I got a Knuckle & Fork card featuring Tim Wakefield and Jonathon Papelbon. Remember back when Papelbon was going to be a starter and not waste all his talent in one inning which sometimes may or may not feature anyone all that difficult to pitch to? Me too, I miss that.



#102 Adrian Gonzalez taunts me since he's on an opposing fantasy baseball team



#98 Shawn Marcum rounds out the pack

All in all I'm satisfied with what I saw, again, it would have been cool to see a Brewer or Twins card, but that might have caused me to go back for more right away and I'm still working on finishing up that Goudey base set as well as the Topps Series 1.