2009 Topps Heritage Variations and Pack #3

I've been out of the card loop for a couple of weeks and '09 Heritage goes all crazy on me. Forget the Mayo inserts that I'm still coming to terms with, what is up with seven super short print variations? Seven?? Seriously???

Eh. You know what? No rant today. If Topps wants to make it completely impossible for anyone to build a master set of Heritage other than maybe all those guys who got the million dollar bailout bonuses, then more power to 'em. I like the base cards just fine, thanks. At any rate, here's the 2009 variation list with commentary in lieu of images. I first heard about these things from Ballcard Mania and swiped the list from The Heritage King, so many hat tips to those gentleman as well as anyone else out there posted this a week ago when it was actual news.

#58 Conor Jackson with Rays logo

Ok, I can make a justification for every one of these cards' existence on the planet except for this one. The dude was born in Texas, Went to college in California and was drafted by and plays for Arizona. What the heck does he have to do with Tampa? This card makes no sense at all.

#70 Thom Glavine

Yeah, I know, Lew/Lou. I wasn't happy about Jon Smoltz last year and I'm not happy now. Lew tricked a Topps photographer 50 years ago and Braves fans have to pay for it now. To the person at Topps who thought up these lousy super short prints and ruined variations for this collector forever, go perform a highly improbable biological function upon yourself.

#102 Adrian Gonzalez with Rangers logo

Adrian actually made his big league debut for the Rangers in 2004, so I'm cool with this. Gonzalez fans can find an affordable Heritage variation in the 2003 Heritage set. He's in a Marlins uniform on one of the 'night' variation cards.

#346 Fred Lewis with Randy Winn photos
#407 Randy Winn with Fred Lewis photos

They're both on the same team, Lewis is basically a younger version of Wynn and Topps has had plenty of photo switcheroos in their history. So, fine, whatever. If they (or any of these for that matter) were inserted like normal SP's just like every other variation card in every Heritage set from 2002-2007 I'd be getting really exited over them.

#445 John Smoltz with Red Sox uniform

(This summary canceled due to bitterness)

#488 Hanley Ramirez AS pictured in Red Sox uniform

Hanley had a cup of coffee with Boston before getting flipped to the Marlins in a package for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell. Makes more sense than Conor Jackson of the Rays.

Apparently all of the Supadupa shorties are found with the light backs, even the two in the short printed 'high' series. Cards 426-500 are short printed right? I haven't missed the boat on that too have I? No matter, because I have completed both the short printed cards and the super short printed cards for my collection. No, I don't have any of them in hand per se, but I did gank the images of every last one of them off of eBay. Most of them are pretty good quality too, less than half have that annoying little eBay image bug on the bottom corner. What can I say, collectors collect no matter the circumstances.

Ok, since this is old news here's a bonus pack of Heritage for you all. This is one of the last five packs in the store that I bought 3 weeks ago at the hobby shop because they didn't have a whole box to sell me. Still got two left to post!

31 Raul Ibanez

Good player, I'm not sure why Philly signed him over Burrell though. I like that they airbrushed the old-skool Phillie Whiz Kids uniform onto Raul. I've noticed that many of these cards have the same random splotchy marks on them that the 2006 Bowman Heritage set had. Anyone else seen that?

Here's the back of Raul's card. The 'He's MOIDER!" toon gave me a big chuckle, so I decided to scan it as well.

251 Manny Ramirez

Thank goodness that A-Rod is busy being a complete moron this offseason and is distracting the news media from Manny drama. I like Manny. Manny is a heluva player. But I don't need to hear about how Manny's a mental case every waking moment.

15 Dustin Pedroia

Funniest commercial in years. I've seen this thing over 9000 times and I still laugh every time.

88 Russell Martin

Awesome catcher. Not as good as Mac.

NAP6 Tim Lincecum

The Lincecum 2K9 commercial is pretty good too, but it loses points for busting on Dance Hall Days and the mental image of the Big Unit staring at Timmy's Wang Chung. Sorry Bailey, I can't trade this to you until I get a double, which might be a while.

440 Elijah Dukes SP

Elijah Dukes has made his way onto my top 10 awesome baseball names list. I just like saying it. Eliiiijah DUkes. I hope he manages to find some PT in that Nationals outfield.

Here's the 'dark' SP back for comparison. I'm not sure if I posted one of these yet. I like the orange better than the mustard yellow on the base cards, but the light backs are much easier to read. I still need to go through my original '60 cards and find which cartoons Topps borrowed from the original set.

376 James Shields

Now, would it look stupid if there was a Padres logo on this card? Well would it? That's how stupid the Conor Jackson card looks, Topps. Just lettin' ya know, guys. James is the all time Tampa leader in World Series victories.

102 A r a G n a e

The pink, black and white cards are kind of tough to read. I like' em anyway. Has anyone done a statistical ananysis of the color combinations on these cards? Nate Silver needs to get working on that. This card sadly has the boring Padres logo on it instead of the wild and wacky Rangers logo. Can you imagine a Padres fan pulling that card? It would likely scare them to death. Adrian is half their offense!

An SP, insert and a few stars makes for a pretty dang good pack. Better than that Jumbo pack I got. I'm not happy about that. But that will have to wait for another time...