2021 Topps Heritage High Number: Box Review (Hobby) - Includes a 1:7,329 card!

Last week, I busted a hobby box of 2021 Topps Heritage High Number as part of my ongoing Breaker's Club #5.  Thanks to the Breaker's Club, I have the ability to add to my list of boxes that I've reviewed on the blog...so let's get right to it!

Each box of 2021 Heritage High Number contains 24 packs with 9 cards per pack.  

The base design continues where the "low series" of 2021 Heritage left off.  More specifically, the High Number portion of the set consists of cards #501 - 725 along with card #216 (Cavin Biggio) which was (for some reason?) left out of the "low series" portion of Heritage earlier in 2021.

As you can see, we did pull the Cavin Biggio card in our box - I don't think that this is a short print per se but it's definitely weird to get a card #216 in a set that actually starts with card #501.  Also, if I were someone who had collected the low series of Topps Heritage, I'd be pretty annoyed with the gaping hole in spot #216 that could only be filled by me also buying Heritage High Numbers.

By and large, Heritage is a set that is geared for set collectors (though with the large amount of short prints, that claim is dubious at best I fear).  Speaking of short prints, as usual they are seeded 1:3 packs and we did get our expected eight:

The only silver lining here is that there are only 25 short prints in the High Number portion (cards #701 - 725).  

In addition to short prints, there are a bunch of different image variations.  Usually, Topps forces you to look at itty bitty print on the back of the card to know whether or not you are holding a variation card but this year Topps actually made things better for collectors by printing the type of variation near the card number at the top of the card.  Kudos to Topps for that!  

As you can see, we did pull one variation - the "City Uniform / Throwback" variation of Nick Madrigal of the White Sox.  Amazingly, the City Uniform variations are seeded 1:7,329 packs!!!  As of the time of me writing this post, the only Nick Madrigal City variation that has been sold on eBay was listed for $999 (but sold as "best offer").  Other City Uniform cards have rather consistently gone for $300+...so this is a great card for the group break (congrats goes out to Ted S. who has the White Sox in this break...this Nick Madrigal will cover the entire cost of joining the Breaker's Club multiple times over)!

While the Madrigal super, super short print is undoubtedly the star of the box, we did pull some other neat cards as well including six different inserts:

I love that Topps made the inserts look like they could have been included in a set released in 1972 if only insert sets were a big thing back then.  

Each box also promises both a box topper (ours was a stamped buyback of Grant Jackson of the Orioles) and a hit (ours was a relic of Nick Senzel which made me happy).

Finally, we pulled a single serially-numbered card - a Red Border Chrome of Jahmai Jones #195/372.  

The Red Border Chrome cards are seeded 1:104 packs so this is another nice pull for us!

Overall, I give the 2021 Topps Heritage High Number (hobby) box the following rating:

Set Design:  B-

Collation:  A

Opening Thrill:  B+

Overall:  A

So, my ratings have to be explained here...  You see, as I was opening the box live on video I couldn't help but be a bit underwhelmed as we ripped pack after pack.  Sure, we got our requisite short prints but when you are sorting through packs the short prints don't appear to be any different than any other base card.  I don't have any particular affinity for the 1972 design so that's kind of a wash for me personally as well.  We also found the six inserts but again while they were fine they weren't anything we haven't seen before from the Heritage brand.  The one relic was okay (though I doubt a non-Reds fan would be overly interested in a relic of a guy who can't seem to stay healthy for more than a few weeks at a time).  And yeah, the red chrome was definitely eye-catching but that was about it.  It was only as I wrote this box review and realized that we had pulled that super, super short print of Nick Madrigal that I had to bump the overall box grade up a lot...I mean, how often do you pull a card seeded 1:7,329 packs?!  

In short, this box was definitely greater than the sum of most of its parts - that one super short print turned it into something quite exciting (even if I didn't know it until I carefully sorted through the entire pile of cards)!