Welcome to our community

Be apart of something great, join today!

This is really going to bother me until next year

Disclaimer: Links on this page pointing to Amazon, eBay and other sites may include affiliate code. If you click them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission.

smapdi

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
4,397
221
In 2004, Topps introduced black refractors to Heritage, numbered the the last 2 digits of the year they were reproducing, and they've been a mainstay in the set ever since. Except for 2017 when they switched to blue for some reason, you could rely on black bordered refractors being a good source of value as they are tough enough to be challenging but not so rare that people don't actively chase sets or their particular players or teams. It's been 16 years so far, and it's a consistently popular parallel. That brings us to 2020, reprinting the black-bordered 1971 set. Obviously, having black border refractors in a black bordered set is going to present a unique challenge in making them stand out. As I see it, they could do 4 things with the chrome cards:

1) Make the base chrome and refractor cards with white and silver (or other) borders, and keep the #/71 cards black
2) Make the #/71 cards a different color, or even a pattern
3) Keep the #/999, #/571, and #/71 tiers all black but differentiate in the picture area or lettering somehow
4) Not make a #/71 parallel

I'd suppose #4 is not really an option. I am guessing #1 is what will happen. This is kind of lame, because I would want the purity of the base chromes being essentially as close to the base set as possible, but I'm not sure what else they'd do with borders. Black or not-black seem to be the options. Based on recent history, #2 could be the way they go. However, the black in the borders of these refractors doesn't really refract, so it would be hard to differentiate between flat black chome and a rainbow finish black chrome, so the #/999 and #/571 tiers won't really look too different if they keep with black on all tiers. So that's where #3 could come in. They've colorized the picture boxes of various other sets like Topps Chrome or Bowman Chrome, while keeping the standard borders, but they have never done that with Heritage.

I'm putting way too much thought into this. I've been worried about this since 2004, and now it's almost upon us.
 

WizardofOz1982

Well-known member
Sep 30, 2017
1,736
1,498
Oklahoma
I'd hate to see #1 because those sexy black borders are what make '71 '71. I think a black refractor is still going to look awesome so I'd just leave it alone. Black base and chrome base and black refractors.
 

clarkzac

Well-known member
Oct 31, 2010
9,825
1,080
I'd hate to see #1 because those sexy black borders are what make '71 '71. I think a black refractor is still going to look awesome so I'd just leave it alone. Black base and chrome base and black refractors.

So are you just going to skip the refractor parallel that's going to be /571? You have to be able to distinguish between the regular refractor and black refractor, which you can't if they are both black borders.
 

jbhofmann

Active member
Mar 12, 2009
6,914
2
Indiana
Base chrome -Black
Refractor- silver border
Black refractor- black

Done


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

WizardofOz1982

Well-known member
Sep 30, 2017
1,736
1,498
Oklahoma
So are you just going to skip the refractor parallel that's going to be /571? You have to be able to distinguish between the regular refractor and black refractor, which you can't if they are both black borders.

Skip it or make it silver/white/something else. Making the whole base set have white borders would ruin the whole idea.
 
Apr 13, 2010
206
1
With the 2007 flagship product, the "Black" parallels were Copper. I like uniformity, so I hope Topps leaves the borders black for 2020 Heritage. The refractor should be enough of a distinguishing factor for the Chrome parallels.


2007 Topps - [Base] - Copper #248 - Ron Gardenhire /56
Courtesy of COMC.com
 

smapdi

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
4,397
221
That's a good point. 2007 Topps was black-bordered, so they had to do something different on that tier. Though copper seems kind of random, seeing as they kept the golds as the bigger print run parallel and they already had the platinum 1/1s. I guess that's what you call "non-linear value."
 

Members online

Top