My 2013 Heritage Journey

I was on the fence about 2013 Heritage and whether or not I would collect the set this year.  I am somewhat fond of the 1964 design, I especially like the orange backs, but I wasn't sure if that was enough.  I went to Target and bought a blaster and after opening a few packs I started to think that just maybe I would go after the set.  I stopped by my LCS and decided what the heck and bought a hobby box.  It set me back $77 and I was thinking I would probably need 2-3 more boxes and an outlay of cash to build the set and I just wasn't sure I wanted to invest $200 more dollars into the set.  In the second to the last pack of my hobby box, out popped this:

I quickly threw it up on eBay and ended up recouping almost all the cash I spent on the entire hobby box.  That got me a little more excited about the set so I decided to go in for another box since the first one paid for itself.  There were no amazing pulls and quite a few duplicate base cards but at least all the SPs were different from the 2 boxes.  Another blaster and a few random packs were purchased and I found myself a long way from the set with a huge pile of duplicates.

I had a relapse and decided to head back to the message boards and read some Sports Card Forum posts about people building the set and made a couple big trades.  My stack of duplicates, while still substantial did grow shorter and my want list shrunk.  I started seeing some blog posts pop up with a couple bloggers building the set and was able to work out a trade with Charlie from Lifetime Topps Project.  He sent me 31 base cards in a trade, here are some of my favorites:

To go off track on the Heritage and complete the trade post, Charlie was able to help me with some 2012 Ginter inserts (I still need 14 of these dang code breaker cards so hit me up if you have some from my want list):

And 2 sweet Giants minis (the Ross is an A&G back):

Back to the Heritage.  As anyone who has ever tried to put a set to Heritage together, the difficultly comes in getting all 75 freakin short prints.  As I mentioned my 2 boxes had all different SPs and I had also picked up a few in trade and in my packs and blasters that helped.  Then I got very lucky and won an eBay auction to pick 15 SPs from a list of about 35 for $17.50 plus $3.25 shipping.  This is a very low price and got even better.  I let him know that I needed 20 from his list and he threw them in for another $1.50 so I got 20 SPs for $22.25!  The Harper pull, the trades and this purchase really put the set within reach for much less than the $300 in packs I thought it would take.

Oh yeah, my last 3 pack of cards from target also yielded this:

It is a Bazooka mini of none other than Mike Trout.  I do believe I will be putting this up on eBay soon to cover some more of my costs.

I am down to needing just a very few base cards and 23 SPs.  If you picked up some random packs and have a couple SPs laying around check my want list and lets make a trade.  I am still trolling the message boards as well because I really would like to trade my way to the end of this set.  I also need some of the Giants as well.

I have realized I have very little willpower when it comes to set building - so far I am after the flagship, Opening Day and Heritage.  I have decided to sit out Gypsy Queen and I hear Triple Play is out for year 2 pretty quickly as well, let's see if I can skip at least a couple releases.