Finally got my three megaboxes of Heritage football the other day. Kudos to eBay seller MidlifeCardCrisis for keeping me informed of the manufacturer delay in shipping (and a great name). He got 'em right out when they arrived Nov. 4.
Prices have actually dropped since I got these. I saw them in Wal-Mart for $50 last week. I don't think I'll go back and get more, though. These are nice, but I'm spoiled by hobby boxes and since I want a lot of the inserts, these proved to NOT be the way to go for that.
If you haven't seen them in the wild, here is the card and pack count. I didn't get any "special inserts". Would like to know what the odds were on pulling a "hit".
Let's dive into
box #1. This shouldn't be an excessively long post (you be the judge), but there will be a lot of images. Interesting that these open from the side. Nice and neat pack arrangement, though.
Nice old school generic player wrapper. Approved.
First card out of the product - JD5!! Can't ask for better than that to me! I'm liking these a lot already!
I won't go card by card, but will instead highlight the inserts and parallels. (Because frankly, that's all there is.) First up, The Expansion. It's nice that they picked '76, the year the Seahawks and Bucs joined the league. Unfortunately, there is no real connection made to that event, or any other movement or addition to the league. This insert is basically a showcase of the franchise player for all thirt...oh, wait...28 of the teams in today's NFL. I'm confused. But this is the default theme for a Topps insert.
Next insert - All Pro Series. The older audience may recognize these as the design from
1976 Wonder Bread. These are great! An awesome callback to a food issue from back then!
On to the parallels. The simplest are the red bordered. There are black (hobby only - those are probably cool), dark gray (also hobby), dark green (Value blaster), dark yellow(?) (Fat packs) and red (Megas). The reds look nice with certain teams, but like Dalton Schultz above, they can clash pretty hard too. Don't think I'll be going for a parallel set unless I find a huge starter lot.
Next, the regular shinies. The top League Leader card is a refractor. And that's how you do league leader cards. The flagship ones aren't bad, they're still separate images of players, but these look better. Must be the frame around the pictures. This design looks pretty good in Chrome, but shiny is over used.
I did get two shiny ones that I'll be keeping. Commanders hot box, I think, since I got four or five Chromes each in all three boxes.
And now, the Megabox exclusive sparkle parallel. These would be nice, but the pattern blots out the name and position text. This along with the clashing colors, makes them hard to read. I'll pass. All parallels shown here are trade bait. It may be a little while before I put 'em on the database....
Come along to
box #2!
Reds include LaPorta from my fantasy team this year. Mitchell's regular card was right behind the red one in the same pack.
Tucker is the refractor in the second batch of Chromies. Shough is sporting one of many alternate uniforms in the set. I have noticed that Topps' football products (at least Flagship and this that I've seen) feature only photos of the players in full uniform and game or practice action. No sideline shots, street wear, or fashion drip coming into the stadium. It's fine, but I guess they're saving that stuff for the Photogenic and other higher end products now.
(Which reminds me of the 2015 Field Access set I'm still trying to finish.) Also, Kyler Murray seems to have flamed out in Minnesota. Two for his rainbow!
More sparkles, more trade bait.
Eric Dickerson keeps showing up in my retro football acquisitions. He was the one Greats of the Game I got from Flagship so far, and now he appears as the subject of the Sweetness insert. These are very 70's styled with the colors and fonts. There are only eight of them total. That is really unusual. Would love to figure out why they only did eight. I'm not complaining, though. Beats the 100+ insert sets from before.
Another All-Pro (Wonder Bread)! The name font would be even better if it was a bit larger. But I still like these the best. Glad to get more than one. More on both concepts later.
Box #3!
Red looks good on the Chiefs cards, and not bad on the Giants either. Looks like I've got a good start on the Rushing Leaders rainbow - that's two!
Puka, renowned rookie Carter, and the two remaining Colts stars in Chrome. JTT refractor.
Two sparkling examples of pass rushers in Garrett and Mack, and the Colts again. Also, the Buccaneers name barely fits in that football, but it was like that in the original set too.
One of the original Heritage inserts - New Age Performers Cam Ward. I will say I'm glad the football flavor doesn't have all the same inserts that the baseball one has had since 2001. Though the news and (Football) Flashbacks would be interesting, but maybe redundant between the two.
And finally, the insert that I remembered from the sell sheets, but was afraid might be hobby only - Through The Years. These are one step from being another show-the-stars insert, but at least have some context to past years and significant(ish) events. I know this one carries over from the recent baseball flavor, so it's all good. And there's only 20 of them, more than half of which are retired players. I'm in!
So now that all the packs have been opened, let's review what was in them. This is the entirety of the inserts from all three boxes. I'm probably just spoiled by the fact that when I open boxes, they're generally hobby boxes and not retail. (Neither happens very often around here.) Some of it has to be Toppsanatics stinginess with inserts in general that's happened over the last few years. (See Allen & Ginter, etc.). Hopefully, the trading will be as good on the Database and beyond as it has been for Flagship, so I can finish these by the next product I open.
All the base cards before the sort.
And after. Not a bad ratio of set fillers (left) to dupes (right). I ended up with just under 75% of the base set.
Here's a look at the back of a base card. Pretty spot-on rendering of the '76 back, including retro Topps logo. Though the one flaw becomes really obvious when sorting these. It's not just the texture of the back stock. (But that's a part of it).
Why is the number so damn small??? The back texture makes it worse. You can see the reflections on the hills and valleys of the card stock. I had to use a magnifier to sort these, and then still got a couple out of place. On everything but the team cards, the number is small enough to fit in the helmet four times.
Not sure why the team cards are different, but that's the right size for the card number! We know you don't cater to the over 50 soon to be 60 crowd, but dangit, you're killing us!
And one final oddity, the card stock on some of these is a lot brighter than most. I don't think these are a parallel, but maybe just a throwback to the old school material, or those Parker Brothers versions back in the day, but those were in '74.
So to wrap it up ~ I really like the set, it's a great homage to the '76 design and themes. Baseball Heritage has strayed lately and seemed to diverge from the originals a little too far sometimes. But these are spot on. It's just the distribution of inserts in these retail boxes that left me a bit disappointed. If you have broken or seen hobby boxes opened, let me know how they are. And hit me up for trades if you got some of this too!
