Collect call: Topps Heritage American Heroes Edition

Posted Sep 1, 2009 by Bob D'Angelo

Updated Sep 1, 2009 at 05:26 PM

I love history. Loooove it. I am not ashamed to admit it, either.

That’s why I love sets like Topps Heritage American Heroes Edition. To me, there is something cool about opening a pack and getting a Herbert Hoover card, or a John Quincy Adams chrome parallel.

I’m a geek, I know.

But seriously, Topps has produced a nice cross-section of American history, with particular emphasis to the U.S. space program that culminated in the Apollo 11 mission 40 years ago that put a man on the moon.

A hobby box contains 24 packs, with eight cards to the pack. A base set consists of 150 cards, with the final 25 cards of the set short-printed combo cards of Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.

A collector should have no problem collecting the first 125 cards of the set — you could call those the “true” base set. A hobby box should yield about six Lincoln-Obama cards, or one every four packs.

Here is the rub about being a history geek, though. I read the backs of the cards. And some of the facts presented by Topps’ writers were erroneous.

Example: the back of the H. Norman Schwarzkopf card notes that the general was “A former state policeman who was the lead investigator in the Lindbergh kidnapping …”

In fact, it was Schwarzkopf’s father who was involved in that case. The Gulf War hero was a toddler when the case came to trial in 1935.

Another example: Theodore Roosevelt’s card back states that “In 1895, six years before he was elected the 26th U.S. President …”

TR became the 26th president in 1901, for sure — but when William McKinley was assassinated in September of that year, and not by the ballot box. Roosevelt was elected in his own right in 1904.

The card of Norman Shumway makes reference to Christiaan Bernard’s first successful heart transplant. Problem is, the last name is spelled Barnard. They got the more difficult first name spelling right, though.

I stopped at three.

Topps promises two relic, stamp or autograph cards per box, and the product I sampled met that average with two relics. The first was traditional: a Heroes of Sport game-used bat card of Jackie Robinson.

The second relic is more unorthodox: “authentic space-flown wiring” is how it is described on the front of the card. And there is it, a piece of reddish wire, which Topps certifies to have been flown in space.

“The relic on this card is certified as having been flown in space on an official NASA mission,” reads the description on the back.

The relic is from one of the Spacelab missions, which were flown between 1983 and 2000 (not to be confused with the Skylab missions of the 1970s).

The base set uses designs from many of the classic Topps sets, and that gives the set a nice orderly feel. One knows, for example, that the cards with the 1966 Topps designs are for people designated as humanitarians (it would have been nice to have included Roberto Clemente, whose humanitarian efforts led to his untimely death in 1972), while the 1986 design is reserved for famous diplomats. Famous battles in American history are depicted on cards with the 1961 design. And so forth.

Inserts of the insert include Heroes of Sport, Heroes of Spaceflight, Medal of Honor winners, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients, and A Hero’s Journey (which traces the life of Lincoln).

Cut signature cards reflect a marvelous cross-section of U.S. history. The Spaceflight autographs are probably the most collectible, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11’s crew the most visible (once again, the third member of Apollo 11, Michael Collins, draws the short stick as there is no auto for him. Collins, you may recall, was the guy who flew the main spacecraft while Neil and Buzz got to frolic on the moon).

Heroes of Sport cut signatures should get a collector drooling, with cards of Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Walter Payton, Ty Cobb and Bronko Nagurski among the subjects.

American Heroes cut signatures pay homage to entertainers (Art Carney, Johnny Carson, James Cagney), writers (Kurt Vonnegut), musicians (Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Parker) and politicians (Lincoln).

Despite its flaws, this set is fun to collect and presents a nice representative sample of American history.