Heritage Hoopla

I know that I am way behind on my Heritage post, but the last few weeks have afforded me very little time for writing.  But I have been thinking a lot about this post, so I guess that's something, right?
Before I get into Heritage 2013, let me back track to a post that I wrote in August of 2012 about Heritage '12. I wrote about how much I liked the design and cardstock of Heritage and how I was actually happy about getting manager cards. I also spoke about how I wasn't going to try and collect the set because the 75 SP cards really felt like a daunting challenge to overcome. However, the more I went through my collection, saw the cards in binders, the more I really ended up liking the set. I think it might be that I really like the 1963 design and I even thought about going vintage and collecting the original '63 Topps set (an idea that I am still kicking around), but whatever it is, Heritage had me hooked.
As the previews of the 2013 Topps products began coming out and since I had already gotten a sense of what products I liked and didn't like, I knew that I would be able to focus on just a few items instead of buying every release. I am also getting married in August, so I also needed to cut my baseball card budget. With my newly developed affection for Heritage, I decided early on that I was all in on the 2013 version of Heritage, which recreated the 1964 Topps design.
As March approached, I was very excited for the release. When March 6th rolled around, I grabbed 2 Hobby boxes from my LCS and was set to begin ripping packs and building my set.  My first box produced 2 box topper packs, one for a 3 card box loader featuring Glen Perkins, Jonathan Papelbon, and Patrick Corbin.

The second pack was an Oversized Box loader, which ended up being a Justin Verlander relic numbered 13/25. It is a very nice card and is something that would look good displayed. I'm not sure what I want to do with it yet, but it was a nice surprise.

Comparison of size of an Oversisized box loader and base card

After my beginner's luck, I started ripping packs and was still very happy with the design and look of the cards. The 1964 design looked great, the photography was also good. Although, I do think I still liked the '12 Heritage a bit better in that regard. The cardstock, as many bloggers and collectors have mentioned, is not great. I had hoped for a thicker card as that is what is cool about vintage cards. But if you want vintage quality, I think the only place to really get it is in vintage cards. So while I am a little disappointed, I'm not up in arms about it.
The thing that has been the most disappointing is the number of duplicates in the 2 boxes that I opened. Both boxes were from the same case, but I still expect more variation than what I got. Some packs in the same box were almost exactly similar which was even more frustrating.  Between the 2 boxes, about 1/3 of the cards that I pulled were duplicates. That is extremely frustrating. Even more frustrating is that I got the same exact New Age Performers in both boxes and a few other duplicate inserts. I also pulled duplicates for 3 different SP's. I knew that completing the set would be a challenge, but all the extra cards I pulled are making it even more difficult. The bright side to this is I have lots of cards to trade in order to complete my set, so once my lists are up, I hope to be able to cut down on the cards I need.

Lots of duplicate insert cards. That will make set building even harder.

The 2 stacks on the left are my sorted cards for the set, the pile on the right is my duplicates.
Almost 1/3 of the cards that I got out of the 2 boxes were duplicates.

I did have a few nice pulls from the boxes including SP variation cards of Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen. My second box produced a 1964 card of Barry Latman, which was kinda disappointing after the ones I received in the first box. The 2 relic cards that I got were nothing really exciting with Colby Rasmus and Johnny Cueto,  except for that fact that the Cueto is hand numbered /99.

So all in all I am still happy with my decision to focus on Heritage for 2013, although I do see that it is going to take some work to complete, but hopefully those of you who read the blog (thank you by the way) will be able to help and we can get some trades going.