Thursday, March 17, 2016

2016 Topps Heritage vs. 1967 Topps Phillies

1967 Topps #290
2016 Topps Heritage #290
I almost decided to skip this little exercise this year once I figured out that Topps has all but abandoned the practice of matching up cards from their Heritage set to a logical counterpart to the original set being referenced.  I still want to go back and perform this analysis for the early years of Topps Heritage, as it seems that the company at one point actually tried to match up cards.

In recent years, they've gone away from this practice and this year's Topps Heritage set has only a few logical matches.  As I've done in the past, the table below matches up this year's Topps Heritage Phillies cards to their counterparts from the original 1967 Topps set.


Aaron Nola and Ryan Howard share their card numbers with Terry Fox and Bill White respectively. The league leaders cards match up and Topps did a nice job replicating the Phillies-themed Hurlers Beware combo card.  It's probably just dumb luck that card #359 in both sets belongs to the Phillies. Other than that, there's no real correlation.

1967 Topps #309
2016 Topps Heritage #309
Other Heritage Random Thoughts:
  • As a few other baseball card bloggers have pointed out, what happened to the little dot between the player's name and position at the top of the Heritage cards?  If you're going to pay tribute to your own design, at least be accurate.
  • The set features Jeremy Hellickson's first Phillies card.
  • Notable Phillies omissions from the set include manager Pete Mackanin, pitcher Adam Morgan, catcher Cameron Rupp and outfielder Cody Asche.
  • I'm fine with Aaron Harang and Jeff Francoeur being included in the Phillies team set as these cards could serve as final tribute cards to both veterans.  But why did we have to get a card of Domonic Brown?  The Phillies cut ties with him back on October 26th, two and half months before Ken Giles was traded to the Astros and Giles appears Photoshopped into an Astros uniform in the Heritage set.
Memory Lane
2012 Topps Heritage vs. 1963 Topps Phillies - 25 Hits
2013 Topps Heritage vs. 1964 Topps Phillies - 11 Hits
2015 Topps Heritage vs. 1966 Topps Phillies - 7 Hits
2016 Topps Heritage vs. 1967 Topps Phillies - 7 Hits

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

To be fair, Series 1 of 1967 did not include the little dot... But I think the card reads much better with the dot, I do wish they'd included it.

deal said...

Thanks for going through this so I didn't need to. The Dot was kept on the Hurlers beware card. It is an odd omission.

Jim from Downingtown said...

I always liked that '67 Bill White card (with Connie Mack's left field bleachers in the background). My first one was a hand-me-up from my 1-year-younger brother in the summer of 1967 - I think there were more creases on it than flat area! I later replaced it (and all my other early-series, round-cornered '67 Phillies).