It’s Heritage Week, or as I like to call it, the most wonderful time of the year!

February 28th is the official release date, but occasionally our local Target gets the retail version in a day or so before so I thought I’d take a quick run through the store to see if I could get lucky and find some.

Typically I expect to see some Target staples when I walk through the door, and today was no exception:

Overpriced Doritos in the main entrance? Check.
Clearance junk from the most recent holiday? Check.
Pack Searcher in the card aisle? Check

After I confirmed my three expectations were met I could settle in and check the display for that rainbow colored, cartoon font, $20 box of goodness known as a Heritage Blaster.

As luck would have it, they were stocked with a full selection of loose packs, jumbo packs, hanger boxes, and blasters. I bought nine of the blasters(five for me and 4 for a friend), left all the loose packs and hangers for “the kids”, and made my way to the exit.

Originally, retail was not in my plan for Heritage as I had preordered two hobby cases, however the allocation issue I wrote about in an earlier post will be impacting my ability to get both. I’ll go through the specifics of how “the plan” is impacted in a future post.

The 2018 Set pays tribute to the 1969 Design, and it does not disappoint in hand!

Get the Checklist Here!

Cards 1-400 are considered the base set, and this year it contains the vast majority of stars. Several subsets like The Topps News, World Series Highlights, League Leaders, and actual checklists!

Cards 401-500 are short printed and come 1 in 3 packs on average. Typically, there are several major stars who are in the short print list, but this year the majority of stars are in the base set and the short prints are more common players with some semi-stars mixed in. I’m fine with that as I am looking to put the full 1-500 set together and will be able to finish off the short prints at a much lower cost this year.

There are also a variety of inserts included in this years set with both Wal-Mart and Target exclusives.

The Target version I found today includes a “1969 Topps Collector Card” which reminds me of 1991 Fleer. I’ll let you decide if that is a good thing or not….. The Wal-Mart exclusive is a 1969 Topps Decal set.

New Age Performers, News Flashbacks, Baseball Flashbacks, Deckle Edge, and Bazooka, and Then & Now are found across all distribution channels.

There are both Autographs and Relics in the release, but as is typical with Heritage, relics fall far more often than Autographs.

Finally, there are several variations found in varying levels of scarcity. Action Shots, Errors, Color Swap, Nickname, and Throwback Uniforms are the categories you could find. Some are obvious to the naked eye, but each will have a different “code” on the back of the card, and that is often the easiest way to confirm if you have a variation on your hands or not.

Here’s some of the highlights of my break! You can see all five boxes on my YouTube channel and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a break!

I got some great Cubs, some sweet rookies, and I really like these inserts this year. The Bryant and Trout are a couple of my favorite base cards, but the Deckle edge cards are my favorite insert. I’m not sure if I will chase the complete master set, but I will most likely try to put together the Deckle Edge insert set.

I’m pretty sure I crushed the odds when it comes to hits in this break! I ended up with two Chrome Refractors (included a Javier Baez), two Jersey cards, and a 100th anniversary parallel. Those fall 1 in 277 packs!

This will give me a great start towards my set, and the additional case of 16 blaster boxes on order should get me real close minus some short prints.