2026 topps heritage hobby box review

as promised, here's my post regarding the 2026 topps heritage hobby box i purchased directly from topps. i am already jonesing for 2027 heritage, but will make do with the 1977 design as it is also a blast from my early baseball fandom days.

the first thing you notice is the lack of facsimile signatures on the cards, which i was glad to see. other than that, it's a fairly faithful representation of the original 1977 design. the copyrights and trademarks are new, as is the rc logo, but for the most part the team names and position banner and player name fonts look true to form. some of the colors are off - wait until you see a cardinals card, and the nationals don't follow the expos coloring from '77 - and there are also some irregularities with the justification of team names (if not player names), and what topps called "a's" in 1977, they are now calling "athletics". all in all, i was happy to see the design as it is presented here.

the dumbest stuff has to do with only having 400 cards in the set, with 100 short prints scattered throughout and the only way to know other than consulting the checklist is by checking the tiny code text. oh, and owen caissie has two cards with the same photo, one of which is an sp.

i'll start off by showing full packs - here's pack 1:

not a bad start. some all-stars, a light blue sparkle chrome refractor and a dark gray parallel, plus a dodger card. here's the back of yoshinobu yamamoto's card:

again, pretty true with the billboard style back. the cartoons are updated (more on those later) with yamamoto getting a sandy koufax related one. the codes are, as ever, hard to read, and they are more important than ever with the scattered nature of the short prints. better to get to beckett or one of the other online checklist sites to confirm the sp's.

by the way, i started in the lower left corner of the box if that is of interest to you.

pack 2:

with trey yesavage starting the season on the il, i wonder if the hype around his first true rookie card is lessened. fellow blue jay jose berrios is the "hit" in this pack, as his card is an sp. here's the back:

it's tough to see as i mentioned, but the last two numbers of the code on this card are "87" while the yamamoto up top ends in "17". you can now see the pattern of abbreviating first names in the cartoons, as we have "s. koufax" and now "n. ryan" on the two card backs i've shown so far.

pack 3:

here you can see where topps didn't quite get the color right for the player names with the cardinal cards. it's much more orange than it was 49 years ago. the league leader cards are pretty faithful, and show up at the start of the set as they did in 1977. next year, these should flip flop with the highlights/record breakers subset. similar to the previous pack, just a short print here. the 7th slot in each pack is either an insert, parallel, or short print. here's the back of parker messick's card

with a cartoon featuring "sudden" s. mcdowell.

pack 4:

a couple more all-stars, plus carter jensen's rookie card. i do know there is some hype around him heading into the season. the hit here is the chrome refractor parallel of the strikeout leaders card.

pack 5:

doubles! victor mesa jr and willson contreras show up again as we hit the last pack from the lower left quadrant of the box. zach neto is a short print, and the (other) max muncy card shows the same issue with the player names on a's cards as there is with the cardinals cards.

pack 6:

mookie betts and our first true insert. the "enterprise" inserts (mine is the rockies' ezequiel tovar) seems like it belongs in topps chrome cosmic, and not heritage. bring back the flashbacks and then & now cards! here's the back of william contreras' short print card

good to see gene, sorry g., tenace get a cartoon. he was a guy i liked back in my early days of baseball fandom.

pack 7:

yu darvish brings the familar heritage cloud background - thankfully one of very few (only?) cards to do so. another light blue sparkle and dark gray parallel as well.

pack 8:

i was glad to see the shohei ohtani card show up. 

pack 9:

only six cards in this pack because it includes the guaranteed relic or auto. it's a francisco lindor clubhouse collection relic which is about all one should expect when buying these boxes. the ryan pepiot card is a chrome parallel.

pack 10:

the last pack of the lower right quadrant comes with three non-base cards - an anthony siegler chrome parallel (it's a siegler hot pack), plus a dark gray parallel, and an elly de la cruz ready and action insert.

now i'll just show cards that caught my eye. 

nolan mclean's rookie card is nice to find after the wbc

and the city connect jersey almost feels like a bad airbrush job from 1977.

some other rookies of note include roman anthony

jac caglianone

and jacob misiorowski

is another key rookie in the set.

the photos on the era leaders card featuring tarik skubal and paul skenes

isn't as closely cropped as the original that featured mark fidrych (a tiger like skubal) and john denny, but i appreciate that because it gives us a chance to see the "cobra" patch that the pirates wore in memory of dave parker.

here are the other short prints i found - owen caissie

the non-sp caissie card is number 88, but looks the same other than the number and the code.

danny jansen

and one of the four-in-one rookie cards

it's pretty true to form.

i did find another of the rookie cards, but it was in the form of a light blue sparkle refractor

it features dodger paul gervase who appeared in one game for the club last year after being acquired in the hunter feduccia/ben rortvedt trade. i didn't scan the back, but if i had, you would see that gervase is 6'10" tall.

i found one more chrome refractor parallel, and it was former ranger marcus semien

i seem to find his cards quite frequently.

the big "hit" in my box was a black bordered card. these are seeded at 1:121 packs. they used to have a print run of 50 but i don't know if that is still the case or not. regardless, i was pleased to see one and i really like the look of the one i found, with one major exception:

the bottom edge has a portion that is peeled up - almost as you would a rip card. it came out of the pack that way, and for the first time ever, i filed a damage claim with topps. the card is on its way back to them and we will see what happens from here. i would be happy to have the card replaced in kind as hunter greene and his reds uniform look pretty good with the black border. the card also features the pete rose memorial patch, and this card would be in the running to represent that patch in my collection.

here's the base version

not quite as striking with the white borders.

here are the four additional dark gray cards in my box

along with the four chrome

and four light blue sparkle refractors

that were in the remaining packs.

the only true insert in the rest of the packs was a nick kurtz raw power card

and so there you have my hobby box!

i also ordered a mega box. it had more of the same, of course, without any major hits. the biggest was a lawrence butler blue refractor

numbered to 150. some of the other interesting cards were a chrome parallel of miguel cabrera's turn back the clock card

and a refractor parallel of luis robert jr's card

the megas have silver sparkle refractors, and one of the ones i pulled was owen caissie's

that's a parallel of his card #88 and not the short printed #360 we saw in the hobby box.

the megas also have red bordered parallels, one of which in mine was brady house

i found a few more short prints, too. i'll show the backs of a couple just to demonstrate the cartoon recycling. like contreras and caissie above, both shane baz and mike burrows have the same cartoons, but with different captions

and i am confused as to why bert blyleven gets his first name spelled out when gaylord perry is just g. perry.

the last card i'll show is another short print - tyler soderstrom's

given the belt, i thought this was likely a photo/image variation, but it's just a short print. i think if opening day were still around, there would be a dugout home run prop insert set every year.

i'll hold off on showing the other dodgers i found here in a future post after i gather more of them for my team collecion. stay tuned.

it's beginning to look a lot like 1977

i've really stopped being a slave to leaf products with their false scarcity print runs, but i do pick up one of their cards now and again. they have some crazy designs and themes, and then they have some that hit the old nostalgia bell pretty hard.

my most recent leaf purchase comes from 2025 leaf lumber, and it's a four-player bat relic card featuring george foster, jim rice, steve garvey, and gary carter. i have the purple version that is numbered to five

i bought it for two reasons. one, the price was low, and two, it hearkens back to the summer of '77 when i was following baseball for the first time. my memories of that season are more tied to the world series and then the 1978 topps baseball card release when i saw numbers like foster's 52 home runs on cards for the first time.  here's the back:

now, these four sluggers did not have the four highest home run totals of 1977. foster and rice led their respective leagues, as shown on the 1978 topps home run leaders card

but turning the card over, we see that jeff burroughs had the second highest total of the season. 

carter was tied for twelfth, but i don't begrudge leaf for including him (or garvey) on the card. i also have to point out he four dodgers there on the back of the league leaders card, each with at least 30 homers. that had never happened before.

some of you may recall that i was given my first pack of baseball cards in 1977. my uncle handed me a pack while i was sitting in the back seat of our station wagon. i didn't find cards of any of these four (the only two i really remember were mike schmidt and bill travers), but i feel a connection to the set regardless. 2026 topps heritage is here, and i bought a box from topps to whet my appetite for the main course that will be 2027 topps heritage. 

i'll have a post up soon.

as for the leaf card, whatever reason leaf had to skip over all of those other guys on the back of the topps card and include garvey and carter instead, i am glad they did so. if only they had made one of these with the four dodgers on it!

one other item somewhat relative to this post - this is a 2025 leaf vivid pre-production proof i bought in the latter part of last year

i decided to buy it for the same reasons i bought the bat card up top - a low price and the nostalgia factor. i watched a lot of baseball in the late 1970's and early 1980's on a tv that looked just like that.

chrome doesn't like me much

it's not a rock in my trick or treating pillowcase, but it still stinks to get this "card"

in a pack of cards. specifically, this came from a pack of 2025 topps chrome update that was included in a mega box that i purchased directly from topps. just a blank refractor which i suppose you could use to create your own art card. i understand that these are printing blanks and are (obviously) not supposed to be sent out in the packs, but it has happened the last couple of years.

the mega box was the last bit of chrome update i purchased, but i had bought a lot of it prior to that order, and in all sorts of distribution methods. as a result, i wound up with a bunch of the different guaranteed parallels, like sepia

xfractor

and topps logo 

refractors. the nick kurtz sepia refractor is nice, and i would have preferred to find his xfractor and topps logo refractor instead of willie maciver's but here we are. overall, my purchases seemed to be american league west heavy. here are some of the other sepias i found:

ben williamson

gunner hoglund

and yusei kikuchi

i'll stick with the al west theme to share some of the other cards i found, such as all-star game inserts of brent rooker

and bobby witt jr

night terrors insert of cam smith

power players inserts of kurtz

wyatt langford

and cal raleigh

plus refractor parallels of jacob wilson

blaine crim

and eugenio suarez

suarez also appeared in raywave refractor form

as did ben williamson

while denzel clarke

was one of the prism refractors i found

i came across a very small number of numbered parallels, but one was a purple raywave refractor of hoglund

numbered to 250.

to complete the card type tour via the al west, here's a base card belonging to kurtz

the only other card types i found that i couldn't represent using a player from the angels, astros, rangers, mariners, or athletics were the fortune 15 inserts (here's rafael devers)

and the aqua wave refractor rookie auto card i found in a hanger pack. it's omar cruz

and i would have preferred a different nl west team be represented.

that cruz card is a sticker auto, but not all of the signed cards in this set are like that. the card i wanted most from this release sure isn't. a week or two before chrome update was released, steve garvey made this post on the socials

i am slowing down in my additions of new garvey cards, but a chrome auto is a must have!

sadly, this is the only dodger card i found in all of my sealed product purchases - hyeseong kim's rookie debut base card

to complete the team set, i went to sportlots and bought the cards of will smith

jack dreyer

and dalton rushing

which left me a roki sasaki card short of the team set.

i added some parallels and inserts to these orders as best (and cheaply) as i could. i wound up with a prism refractor of smith

plus his all-star game insert

as well as that of clayton kershaw

and freddie freeman 1990

and power players inserts

plus the mookie betts power players insert

as well.

it's no surprise that i had to go to ebay to find the garvey legends auto, and i was successful fairly early on. the "base" versions are numbered to 50, and that's what i have

on card beauty!  here's the back:

i've seen some other variations sell for silly prices, including the 1/1. i am content to have this singular version. in fact, i would likely purchase one of orel hershiser's cards from this release before i targeted a garvey parallel.

in all, i would have had more success for my collection had i purchased a team break slot for the dodgers and seek out the garvey card as i did rather than buy as much sealed product. but where's the fun in that?