With the 2017 Major League Baseball season under wraps, baseball fans still looking for their fix can look towards the Arizona Fall League and Caribbean Series to keep an eye on the game’s top prospects. Topps attempts to further the discussion of the next prospects to take off with the release of the
2017 Topps Heritage Minor League Baseball set.
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| 2017 Topps Heritage Minors / Topps |
Designed in the mold of the classic 1968 Topps set,
2017 Topps Heritage Minors aims to catch the nostalgic senses of veteran collectors while attracting fans who fill minor league ballparks in every corner of the country. Leading off the base set is New York Mets phenom Amed Rosario, who gave the team a much needed shot in the arm after tearing up the Pacific Coast League. Building upon Rosario’s newly minted fame, Topps has followed up with the likes of Mickey Moniak, Nick Senzel, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Victor Robles to add to the ranks of the top prospects in this set.
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| 2017 Topps Heritage Minors Inserts and Short Prints / Topps |
The 200-card base set is also supplemented by an additional 20 short prints as well as four different colored base card parallels. Topps cleverly kept more of the sought after prospects in the short prints including Tim Tebow, forcing collectors to dig deeper to round out their sets.
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| 2017 Topps Heritage Minors Green Parallel / Topps |
Diving into the inserts, minor league All-Stars are neatly highlighted in the Baseball America subset. Topps shows its lighter side with the 1968 Topps mini discs. The discs are a throwback to a time when cards were exchanged and played with and not cut to exact size to fit neatly into 9-card binder pages.
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| 2017 Topps Heritage Minors 1968 Mini Discs / Topps |
Each box guarantees one autographed card and one relic card. The box provided for this review yielded an autograph of Cincinnati Reds outfield prospect T.J. Friedl and a relic card of Chicago White Sox outfielder Eloy Jimenez. While both of those hits were of the more common variety, collectors have a chance to scoop up autographed cards of Derek Jeter and David Ortiz as part of the Looming Legacy series, and autographed 1968 Mint relic cards of top organizational prospects.
While the hardcore collectors would like to see this set come out during the minor league season so they can track down their favorite local player before they move up their organizational ranks, the timing of
2017 Topps Heritage Minors provides fans and collectors the opportunity to track a wide range of next year’s future stars unencumbered by the heat of the postseason baseball.
