Things I Am Sorting Part 7- 2016 Heritage Minors

My schedule has been completely off today.  I intended to write this post this morning when I woke up, then it was suddenly lunch time, and then I was stuck on the awesomeness of the NC State-Notre Dame game.  The game was in Raleigh in the rain and wind from Hurricane Matthew.

There are all sorts of funny pics, gifs, and videos floating around the internet if you want to see plays slipping and sliding around in a hurricane.  The important thing that the Wolfpack won the game....

On to baseball cards.

I spent a little bit of time earlier in the week hanging out at the Sports Card Co-Op in Raleigh.  I had done a short write up a few days back about a pair of single cards I picked up at the store, the hit cards I pulled out of Heritage High Numbers and Heritage Minors, but promised a little bit more in depth run down on both products.  I am going to start with Heritage Minors since it is always one of my favorites every year.

A quick review of my hits from the box.....

I landed two autographs in the box; promising Astros prospect Francis Martes and Royals pitcher Nolan Watson.  Martes is a solid prospect and is in the Top 100 Prospects of several major publications.  Watson is a fringe prospect at this point who has not missed many bats in the lower levels of the Minors.  

I also landed a Hunter Harvey relic card.  It's a relic card, not sure what else I can say here.  

Heritage Minors always has the same design as the Topps Heritage set which is a copy of the 1967 Topps set.  There are several products every year that have Minor League players, but the Heritage and Pro Debut are the only two with pictures of the players in their Minor League uniforms.  Here is a look at two of the base cards, I picked out Durham Bulls players....

There are also parallels for the base sets.  In previous years there have been all sorts of different colored parallel cards, but this year I have only seen the blue.  Out of my box of Heritage Minors I pulled an Austin Gomber parallel card.  Pretty good one to land.  The card is numbered out of 99.

My other two highlights out of the product are the League Leader cards.....

You don't see many Minor League sets with League Leader cards.  It's cool to see that Topps included players from across the different levels of the Minors and not just one league or one level.  While some of the short seasoned leagues aren't really well represented on the counting number stats, there are all sorts of players from all sorts of leagues on these cards.

and my final highlight is the remakes of the 1967 Topps Stickers which feature both players and mascots.  

There is a Wool E Bull card in this set which I did not manage to pull, so that will be high on my list of cards to find in the very near future.  I pulled five of these out of my box and am seriously considering working on this set this fall.  Should be fun.  

Overall, I love Heritage Minors.  Always a really cool product if you are a Minor League baseball fan and it's not exactly expensive either.  Collectors shell out all kinds of money on Bowman, these are the same players, but I think the set is a little bit more fun to assemble.  

Trading Card Co-Op Part 2: Cardinals and Heritage Cards

I have a little bit of time away from work for the next few weeks, so I decided to venture out a few days back to pay a follow up visit my local card shop here in Raleigh.  I ended up picking up a pair of single cards while I was there and also decided to dabble a little bit with two products; 2016 Topps Heritage Minor League and 2016 Topps Heritage High Numbers.

I will do a little bit more of an in depth breakdown on the two Heritage products in a separate post.  For now, I am just looking at the singles and hit cards I pulled.  I had originally had decided to come in for the Topps Heritage Minors cards, always one of my favorites as a Minor League baseball fan, but found two sweet Cardinals cards while I was perusing the boxes and displays.

First, we are going with a Cardinals player wearing their college uni.....

I haven't done a lot with last year's Panini College cards, mainly because the NC State cards have gotten pricy with both Russell Wilson and Tree Turner being featured on them, and a complete lack of Mizzou cards.  I had seen some Weaver cards in a few of the Cardinals trading groups on Facebook, but had not pulled the trigger on any of these yet.  All of my Weaver cards up to this point have either been Cardinals cards, or from his time on the USA Baseball College team.

This is a pretty sweet card with a nice swatch of jersey, clearly from a Florida State uni.  Nice card, now I need to find one of the Weaver autographs from this set.

Next.

I was really excited about this one.  Most of the time when Triple Threads comes out I sit around and ignore it for a month.  I love these cards, but they are so hard to win in auctions online when they first come out.  Sure, I could just buy a box, but I usually just want the Cardinals and Rays cards out of this set.  I just go for the singles.

This year's Triple Threads cards still generally have the jersey and patch pieces going horizontally across the bottom of the cards, but this year there are also quite a few cards with a vertical format.  These remind me a lot of the 2010 set.....

The Tsunami card is pretty sweet too.  I know that Martinez was in the last two year's Triple Threads sets too, but I do not think that Topps made any cards of Martinez outside of the plain Jane jersey card with an autograph.  Nice to see Topps throw out his nickname on a card which is tattooed on the inside of his forearm.  

On to things that are not single Cardinals cards.  I checked out two newer products when I went into the Trading Card Co-Op.  I was initially just going to with a box of Topps Heritage Minors, but decided to dabble a little with the Heritage High Numbers product too.  Last year I did well with the retail version of High Numbers, why not.  

Again, I will do a full write up on both sets at some point this weekend.  

Minors is up first and I am just focusing on the hits I pulled.  The box claims that you are guaranteed two hits; an autographed card and a relic card.  I did a little bit better than the stated odds.  My first hit card I pulled was my relic....

I pulled a Hunter Harvey jersey card.  The Orioles pitching prospect is a North Carolina native from Catawba and has been ranked in Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus Top 100 Prospects lists at different points over the last two years.  The former first round draft pick ended the year playing A Ball.  Aways from the Majors, so this is going to get filed away for a few years and we will revisit.  

My first autograph belonged to Royals prospect Nolan Watson.  He was a first round draft pick in 2015 and started out locally with the Burlington Royals, but was promoted up the Lexington Legends last year.  In two year's Watson has 35 starts and an ERA of almost 7.  This year he gave up almost 2 home runs per 9 innings.  Hopefully Mr. Watson can turn it around at some point.  

Next.  

I am really intrigued by this card.  There are prospects who are really good, they play well in the Minors, and the whole way up their cards are popular and have value.  There are prospects who are really bad, but they were really hyped in the draft, their cards are expensive....I just scratch my head.  Then there are players like Martes.  Who is he?  He was traded for Colin Moran.  Not excited?  He played in Double A last year for Houston's Corpus Christi Hooks, struck out more than a batter per inning, and now is appearing on Top 100 prospect lists at Baseball America, MLB.com, and Baseball Prospectus.  This card sells for a whole lot of nothing, but seems like it is one to hang on to.

Last up.

Heritage High Numbers only has one hit, which for me, was a red autograph of Twins prospect Jose Berrios.  The Twins had a rough year, Berrios too, but he has been in Triple A the last two years and been very impressive.  Perhaps a little bit better supporting crew and he will be just fine.  Excited to land a red autograph though all things considered.