Last week I Tweeted this:
- 2001 Upper Deck Decade 1970s. Always liked these. Bought the 75 I needed to complete the set via @Sportlots. Even with postage it was about .25 per card. @SABRbbcards
To which, Rob Neyer replied, “Aren’t you the guy who doesn’t like Heritage?” (I paraphrase.)
Yes, that is me, the guy who doesn’t like Heritage, for reasons stated here. Why do I like Upper Deck’s version of a classic Topps design? It got me thinking.
I’m not anti-nostalgia, which I think people assume goes hand in hand with my disdain for Heritage. Collecting cards is, by definition, a nostalgic enterprise and even buying new packs and sets is an attempt to recreate an old, warm feeling.
What I like about the Upper Deck set is that it isn’t marketing itself as some kind of replica product, updated, which has always been a false claim of any Heritage set. The differences between Heritage and the originals are deep, as I posted about, and mar the effort for me. They don’t feel the same; they come across as less than accurate knockoffs. They’re replicants and their flaws come out.
Upper Deck doesn’t try to mimic the past. Rather the Decade set is an homage, stealing a design as close to 1975 Topps as likely legal. The pictures are nearly all great (some black and white photos negatively affect the overall look) and the set evokes the era nicely.
The subsets are swell, a mini-history of the ten years. All in all, there’s a lot crammed into a 180 card base set.
As Tweeted, I had more than half the set and, at .18 per card (pre-postage), it was more than worth my while to finish the whole thing. I got a big stack of cards and a complete set.
I try very hard not be generation based, and avoid at all costs the “everything was better when I was a kid” mentality (it wasn’t). One of the things I enjoy about this Committee, and the Twitter baseball card world, is that collectors younger than I have the same feeling about 1989 Topps as I have about 1971 Topps and that’s as it should be. Cards are like music – what you love as a kid stays your truest love. There’s a reason that John Lennon always preferred Chuck Berry. Lennon was a kid when he first heard him.
And maybe that’s at the root of my Heritage problem. I don’t need to see today’s players framed as if they were players then. Baseball is the only sport whose fans insist that the players of today are lesser than the players of their youth. “Clayton Kershaw isn’t half the pitcher Jim Bunning was. You know Bunning used to throw 300 innings a year?” We’ve all heard variations of this insipid argument. Spare me.
So let today’s players have their own design and let the ‘70’s players have theirs, or something close.
SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee 
So I just read this post over on Fangraphs and it captures A LOT of my problems with Heritage and seems like it accurately describes your issues too. Salient pull-quote:
https://tht.fangraphs.com/the-postmodern-mariners/
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s good!
LikeLike
tangential, I know, but perhaps Lennon liked Chuck Berry ’cause Chuck Berry was a musical genius, and Lennon knew that even as a kid
LikeLiked by 1 person
Could be, but who you glom on to when you come of age, in music, sports, movies, baseball cards, etc., tends to stay your #1.
LikeLike
Let’s not give Upper Deck too much credit here . . . you see a design that kinds of plays at being a ’75 Topps but stops short because it would be, I dunno, aesthetically dishonest? I see a company that, like Fleer, did its best to follow in the footsteps of Topps after Heritage became a bid deal. Only trouble was that Upper Deck and Fleer didn’t have a “heritage” of their own that was old enough to recreate. So you ended up with things like 2001-03 Upper Deck Vintage (complete rip-offs of ’63, ’71 and ’65 Topps designs, respectively) or 2000-01 Fleer Tradition (complete rip-offs of ’54 and ’56 Topps designs, respectively).
The point being, UD and Fleer had no problem doing what Topps was doing . . . they were just reduced to borrowing what Topps did in the past.
I’ve got a set of the ’01 UD Decades 1970s collection in a box somewhere . . . I can’t say it’s one of my favorites, because it’s a fairly unattractive set. with mediocre photography and garish design elements into which not a lot of thought seems to have been put. I kind of wanted to like it better, but have never been able to embrace it.
As for Heritage, you’re more than entitled to not like the concept. I would never suggest otherwise. But the more you hammer the point, the more it sounds like you’re trying to rationalize your feelings. Sort of like that Fangraph excerpt from the piece on the Mariners . . . if one has to go to that length to explain why one doesn’t like something, one ends up sounding like one is trying to convince oneself, not others.
I own a set of every Heritage release, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have problems with it. But those problems are kind of the opposite of yours. I have this sense that, unless Keith Olbermann stopped by for a visit, there is very little if any institutional memory in the room at Topps, and that they’re producing sets the appeal of which they don’t actually understand. So my problem isn’t the concept, it’s the execution. A few years into the program, it started to feel like Topps was going through motions and couldn’t be bothered to figure out the elements that made those sets so special. And even when they get it right (e.g., the photography and presentation of the last three Heritage sets have looked great), they get it wrong (e.g., the same pose for every hitter, the same pose for every pitcher).
And yet I thoroughly enjoy the Heritage sets. Putting new players on old designs doesn’t cheapen the experience of appreciating the originals at all. But that’s just me. And, since the brand is now 19 years old, obviously many others, too. When people lose interest, Topps will stop making it.
You’re right, of course, when you say “Cards are like music – what you love as a kid stays your truest love.” My iPod is jam-packed with ’60s pop and classic rock, and my 1967 Topps set will always be the center of my collection. But to suggest that Heritage circumvents the right of today’s players to have their own design is ridiculous, because of course they DO have their own design. Several of them, in fact, over a variety of brands. I just wish Topps had done a BETTER job of executing the 2016 Heritage set with the 1967 design . . .
LikeLiked by 1 person
We agree on many points (though clearly not on all).
LikeLike
Clearly 🙂 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Really. I agree on the execution problem and on UD and Fleer simply ripping off old designs.
It’s a start!
LikeLike
🙂 I don’t think there’s a definitive answer to all this; it really just comes down to personal preference. I respect and kind of understand your misgivings about Heritage. I just don’t agree with them. The difference probably gets to the ways we each regard the iconic card designs and the place they hold in our respective experience. But the marketplace will make the final call on how long it goes on. When no one wants to buy the product any more, Topps will stop making it. As much as I’ve enjoyed Heritage, there are a lot of designs from the ’80s and ’90s in which I have little interest in seeing resurrected . . .
LikeLiked by 1 person