2008 Heritage Box Break - Part 1: Ancillary junk and the first four packs

I've teased you enough, time to post this thing. I'm a little on the exhausted side from chewing all that gum, so I'll be kind of brief about the box-type stuff.

Topps used their typical flimsy pencil box style box for the Hobby box. Kinda sad considering the cool shoe box they gave Bowman Heritage. It looks nice enough though plus it has two new things: an autograph or relic per box and a special set collectors seal of approval. The bottom is boring other than the list of relic groups.

Minnie Minoso is tough at 1:18,000 packs as you can see below on the wrapper odds. The list above isn't complete either, as I have seen a listing for a Frank Robinson relic on eBay already.

Ok, enough of the packaging. Topps put the serial number at the very bottom so I can't scan it without dismantling the box. That ruins my running joke on these box break popsts so my heart isn't in it this time. Here's the first of the box toppers:

Yessss! I really really wanted a buyback card. Here's who I got:

Charley Maxwell, outfielder for the Detroit Tigers. He was a pretty good player for the Tigers in the late 50's... As you can see, Topps distinguished the buybacks with a foil stamp with a 50th anniversary logo. It would bring up some pretty mixed emotions to pull a superstar player with one of those stamps. I'd hate to see a nice looking Aaron defiled by the foil. I'd also punch nuns and orphans to get my hands on one. Here's the back:

Not quite a scarce high series card. It has some wax stains too. The cartoon is pretty cool though, I'm going to keep an eye out to see if Topps recycles it in the base set. The buybacks are in every other box so I got lucky on this one. Here's the second box topper.

An advertising panel so you can let the youngsters know you have 2008 Heritage! Woohoo!


Two rooks and Matt Capps. Why'd they put two rookies on the same panel? Spread 'em out, Topps. I haven't seen a checklist for these so I don't know if all the cards are in the set (dang, that would be impossible to complete, wouldn't it?) or who made the cut in the checklist. This thing is also going to be a pain to store. Maybe I should try to tempt Steve with it to see if he wants to make a deal. I've certainly taunted him enough. E-mail me bro, it's yours if you want it. Make me an offer. Ok, enough appetizers, on to the meat of this box.

Here's the first pack. Plus a little extra taunt to get Steve's attention so he'll trade for that ad card. Since this is a box for set collectors, I'm going to keep a running tally of the percentage of the set I have. And yes, black backs count toward the set. If I end up with a set with a black back here or there instead of a green I'm not really going to care. After one pack I now have 1.6% of the set. Hooray!

Pack 2:
132 Joe Koshansky RC
188 Adrian Gonzalez
223 St. Louis Cardinals
125 Harvey Garcia RC
353 Jeremy Hermida
325 Dan Wheeler
286 black Tony Gwynn
Hey you bastards, where's my eighth card??

Pretty blah pack, made worse by a missing card. Maybe the stray card will turn up in one of the other packs. This better not be the missing auto or relic card that I've heard about in some forum posts. Two more rookies not good enough to be included in last year's sets, a good first baseman that no one knows about, a Hall of Famer's kid and a team card. The team card looks just like the '59 cards, save for the unnecessary Wall o' Doom Topps insists on photoshopping onto every team photo, The checklist for cards 288-335 is on the back of the card. Not really interesting, but historically accurate. The first two packs have had a couple of cards each with a printers mark on the front, it looks like the sheet got caught under a roller or something. I hope the whole box isn't like this...

Set completion - 3%

Pack 3:
300 Chase Utley
191 James Shields
208 Billy Butler
104 Adam Jones
403 Scott Baker
135 Mitch Stetter RC
C30 Ichiro Chrome #450/1959
197 black Derrek Lee
Ok, this one's better. Utley (with choice card #300), Adam Jones, Derrek Lee and an Ichiro Chrome. Sweeeeeeet. I've never gotten into the whole Heritage Chrome thing, but Ichiro is Ichiro. The Chromes looke really good on the '59 design too. The cartoons on the back are my favorite part of this set. They are definitely in the exact style of the original '59 'toons, but I haven't seen one directly swiped off the set that I can remember. I'll have to pull out my old Topps box and start looking through for identical cartoons.

Set Completion - 4.2%

Pack 4:
290 Nate McLouth
142 Rich Thompson
367 Baseball Thrills - Tulowitzki triple play
96 Mark Derosa
36 Kenny Lofton
372 Baseball Thrills - Ryan Howard fastest to 100 home runs
461 Chone Figgins SP
18 black Dontrelle Willis
Ugh. I haven't pulled a Brave yet, but I did pull Troy Tulowitzki tagging Edgar Renteria for an unassisted triple play against my Bravos. I wish they had made just the SP's black backs, but I like the fact that they did put them in. This is a stealth insert I don't really mind that much. It looks like they picked some good players so far. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that high numbers are SP's. 425-500 or so. We should have a solid Short Print list by Monday though. Next post should have four or five more packs. I haven't decided yet.

Set Completion - 6%

The box so far:
30 base cards (common, black back & SP's)
4 black backs
2 Short prints
1 Chrome