Product Overview
2024 Topps Heritage Baseball takes things back to 1975 when Captain and Tennille were topping the music charts, Archie Bunker was being a curmudgeon from the comfort of his living room and a first class stamp was a dime. Here, it’s more about getting nostalgic for the likes of George Brett, Robin Yount and one of the most colorful designs to ever grace Topps’ flagship line.
While there are a lot of similarities to previous Heritage sets in its build and scope, there’s one major change that gets to the heart of the brand’s base set.
Heritage is traditionally a favorite for collectors who like to build sets. It taps into the origins of the hobby before hits and other chase cards. To that end, the 500-card checklist is one of the bigger ones of the year when it comes to a single release. Besides regular player cards, there are subsets for MVPs, League Leaders and more. The design is based on 1975 Topps Baseball.
As has been the case for the past several years, the base set includes 100 short prints (1:3 packs). This is where one of the big changes comes in as the SPs move from the end of the checklist to the start. For those simply wanting to build a shell set of the 400 main cards, that now means going from #101-500 (replacing #407, a stray short print, with #82, not an SP). From a set building perspective, that gap at the front a lot different and harder to ignore than when they land at the end.
2002 Topps Traded and 2002 Fleer Tradition Baseball are a couple of modern products that have taken this approach.
Among the parallels are Red Border cards, which are exclusive to Target giant boxes. Flip Stock return as hobby exclusives. These reverse the side of the sheet the cards are printed on. As a result, the fronts on these feel rougher and backs have more of a glossy finish. Needless to say, they’re not the easiest cards to spot.
The 2024 Topps Heritage Baseball checklist has several variation themes that change base cards in various ways. These include Black and White Images, Color Swap, White Border, Nicknames and the historically popular Throwback Uniforms. Image, Black Border, Error and Missing Facsimile Signature Variations are also on the checklist and are exclusive to hobby.
Select cards also have Chrome versions (/999), giving them a distinctly modern twist. These have their own mix of parallels:
