Thursday, March 04, 2010

2010 Topps Heritage Baseball Variations and Short Prints

Yeah, I know I'm a little behind. You've likely already heard, but to keep up with consistency's sake of running short print and variation info (I find I need it five years later quite often), here's the lowdown for 2010 Topps Heritage Baseball.

Short Prints:
Cards 426 - 500 are all short printed. They're inserted 1:3 packs.

Variations:

Dice Game
Based on a rare test issue from 1961 that added an interactive game element, the Dice Game variations in 2010 Topps Heritage are 1:72 packs. The checklist consists of 18 cards.

Image courtesy of Fielder's Choice
  • Joe Mauer
  • Victor Martinez
  • Albert Pujols
  • Mark Teixeira
  • Grady Sizemore
  • Justin Upton
  • Adam Jones
  • Vladimir Guerrero
  • Matt Kemp
  • Ichiro
  • Daisuke Matsuzaka
  • Tim Lincecum
  • Chase Utley
  • Ian Kinsler
  • Derek Jeter
  • Hanley Ramirez
  • Alex Rodriguez
  • Chipper Jones 
Color Variations
These appear to represent the "cute gimmick cards" of the series. Topps didn't say how rare the color variations are other than they're "extremely short printed."

  • Albert Pujols - Black-Black
  • Joe Mauer - Black-Black
  • CC Sabathia - Green-Yellow
  • Derek Jeter - Red-Yellow
  • Grady Sizemore - Green-Red
  • J.A. Happ - Orange-Blue
  • Zack Greinke - Yellow-Blue
  • Ryan Braun - Blue-Orange
  • David Wright - Green-Yellow
  • Pablo Sandoval - Yellow-Green
If there's going to be extreme short prints, this I don't mind so much. They don't scream as being a publicity stunt (Rudy G raising his fist to the heavens in a Red Sox celebratory scrum), nor do they insult the intelligence and allegiances of baseball fans ("Thom" Glavine, slapping rival logos on superstars). These are subtle variations that don't wreck havoc on a set.

Exclusives
Topps honors the 1961 home run chase by producing three 15-card subsets of exclusives that come together to make one 45-card insert set. Each will have a different player in the set:

Babe Ruth (hobby packs)
Roger Maris (Wal-mart exclusive)
Mickey Mantle (Target exclusive)

Among these are three short prints: Ruth (#60), Maris (#61) and Mantle (#56). Each will also have a relic parallel serial numbered to the player's jersey number (Ruth /3, Maris /9 and Mantle /7).

Autograph Note
Finally, Topps also announced that all of Juan Marichal's Real One Autographs were signed in red. None are sequentially numbered like the rest of the red ink variations in the set.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

the cardbabout mantle hitting a ball 560 some feet looks phony...batters did not use gloves in 1961 and that does not look like the interior of yankee stadium as you could not see the new york skyline from what is shown...the bat looks like it is photoshopped into the batter's hands...

Anonymous said...

more from 6:33 anonymous: the original mantle 565 home run card was a picture of yankee stadium taken from an airplane. i am an old biomechanics guy who coaches xc , and if a batter actually had that stance, he would likely be batting .000...look at the right hand through a magnification and it looks like the drawing of an artist...and mantle was batting right-handed at the time...the batter does not even look like mantle...i say it is a contrived card.

Anonymous said...

I think that there is another variation in '10 Topps Heritage baseball - only a few "darker" jersey cards have appeared on players such as Roy Halladay. On the greater amount of cards, the jersey is a light gray color - but on only a few others it is a deep dark charcoal.