A Questioned Answered

Last month, I wondered aloud why Aroldis Chapman was featured as a Yankee on his 2017 Heritage base card, but as a Cub on his Chrome and mini parallels. 

Well, fear not: the blogosphere's most loved Sooz came to the rescue and gave a reason. 

According to her,

"It's the timing of when the cards are due to the printer. The chrome and parallels have to be there much sooner than the base cards. There is essentially a late form that goes out for the base to get free agent signings and offseason trades. So Topps tries to capture it when they can."

Sooz is definitely an authority on the subject, so this answer is good as gold for me.

Thank you, ma'am, for your insight!

It's In The Details...I Think...I Hope...

Just a warning: quite a few of my upcoming posts are centered on 2017 Topps Heritage. It will be one of the few (maybe the only) sets I put together this year, and I am chasing the parallels for Rangers players. So it will be featured...frequently.

One of the first parallels I was able to snag for a decent price was this Sam Dyson bright yellow back parallel:

One of my biggest criticisms of '17 Heritage is the parallel selection. The bright yellow is pretty hard to spot, as there is a slight variation in the base print cards. It is easy to confuse the lighter printed base cards with the short printed bright yellow backs, which are reportedly limited to a print run of 25. 

Just so you can see what the base back looks like, here's one for comparison:

So...yeah. Not a lot of difference there.

I just hope I didn't get duped with a lighter-printed base card.

(For the record, here's the front of the card)

Hope everyone is well!

Something I Just Noticed

In all the excitement around my hot hand with 2017 Heritage, I missed something. I make no bones about my distaste for most things Topps - I'm no fan of the exclusive licensing with MLB because I think it makes Topps lazy. I've pointed out easily correctable problems in the past to support this. However, in my excitement, I gave Topps too much slack. I found something that makes no sense.

Below is the base card (a short print) of Aroldis Chapman:

In the card, Chapman is featured in a Yankees uniform, very clearly from 2016. No problem there. But let's take a look at the Chapman Chrome card:

What? Why the heck is he in a Cubs uniform? I spent some time thinking and came to the conclusion that the Chrome cards most likely require more time to manufacture. This could have meant that the card design had to be submitted before Chapman re-signed with the Yanks (December 6th, if I'm not mistaken). That still seems like more than enough time to get him in the proper uniform, but I'm willing to give Topps the benefit of the doubt.

Until I saw this:

This is the mini parallel for Chapman, printing on normal stock, just smaller. Again, Chapman is sporting a Cubs uni, rather than the pinstripes of New York. So what in the actual hell gives?

My guess: Topps is trying to milk the Cubs' World Series championship for all it's worth. They want to feature him Cubbies blue to sell more cards. I mean, there is no other explanation, is there?

I guess my last question is this: why didn't Topps just feature him in a Cubs uniform on the base card also and wait until High Number came out to put him in pinstripes? That's their normal procedure, so what gives?