Minor Breaks: Experimenting With A Hobby Box Of 2022 Topps Heritage Minors

Topps Heritage Minors is not one of the big releases of the year. In fact, it’s a fairly under-the-radar product and one of the most affordable breaks you’ll find.

But what can be found in a box of 2022 Topps Heritage Minors? What hits does it contain? And what’s up with old-school base cards of minor leaguers?

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What is 2022 Topps Heritage Minors & why we’re breaking it

Topps Heritage Minors was released on November 23, 2022. It brings the Heritage feel and the classic 1973 Topps design to the minor leagues. Top Prospects and minor leaguers make the up the bulk of the checklist, although a few former major league stars make appearances in some of the insert sets.

 Why break it? Well, prospects are always fun. But this product also combines a very reasonable price point with the guarantee of two on-card signed autographs per box, plus a number of other interesting (although not particularly rare) parallels, inserts, and variations.

2022 Topps Heritage Minors Box – The details

Topps Heritage Minors 2022 packs each contain 8 cards. Hobby boxes contain 18 packs per box. The base set consists of 200 cards, so we’ll only see a fraction of the set in this break, but it’ll be interesting to see what top prospects we pull.

Are base cards from this product worth grading? It’s questionable, but if PSA prices stay low and we pull some interesting base cards, I’d strongly consider giving it a shot.

The hobby box cost me $49.90 on eBay, with free shipping. With tax, I paid $53.39 delivery.

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2022 Topps Heritage box toppers

Right on top, the box had three 1973 Topps Baseball Pin-Up box toppers. It was a bit interesting that they were just loose on top of the box, but thankfully they appeared to be in good condition. I’d have expected a box topper pack of some kind.

None of these three are top prospects, so they’re not worth grading.

The hits from 2022 Topps Heritage Minors

I won’t go through every pack in this 2022 Topps Heritage Minors break, but will report on all the hits found within, with a few pictures and some thoughts on value.

The 2022 Topps Heritage Minors autographs

As advertised, the box produced two on-card autographs. The two autographs I pulled were both Real One Autographs.

The first player is Alex Binelas, who was acquired by the Red Sox in the Hunter Renfroe/Jackie Bradley Jr. trade. He’s currently ranked as the #37 prospect in the Red Sox system. The other prospect is Angel Martinez, the son of former major leaguer Sandy Martinez. Martinez had a solid season in 2022, but isn’t among MLB’s Top 100 Prospects.

With neither of our autographs featuring prospects of particular note, this is a slight disappointment, although they are nice-looking cards. In an ideal world, the autographs would have been of better prospects, and been potential grading candidates.

As it is, the two autographs are probably worth a few bucks each, which if I decide to sell them will help offset the purchase price of the box.

The 2022 Topps Heritage parallel

The box produced one parallel, a Blue Border Brandon Boissiere. He isn’t an MLB Top 100 prospect, so I don’t expect the card to have a lot of value, but may be worth a few bucks since it is serial numbered to 99 (72/99, to be exact).

Other inserts

In addition to the autographs and parallel, the box contained a number of other inserts. While far from rare – they range from 1:4.5 packs to 1:6 packs – they do feature some interesting players and have some fun themes.

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1973 Topps 1953 Reprint

These inserts, inspired by the 1953 Bowman design, contain a mix of current prospects and former stars in their minor league uniforms. I pulled three of these from the box, including former two-sport stars Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders as well as prospect Hedbert Perez.

The Jackson in particular is a cool card, although I’m sure not particularly valuable. Still, I’ll consider submitting it to PSA just because it’s a fun card.

1973 Topps Pack covers

Inspired by the wax pack design of 1973 Topps, this set is prospect-focused. This box produced four of these cards. Lawlar is #12 and De Le Cruz #14 on the MLB Top 100 Prospects list, while Colas checks in at 95. The first two are potential PSA subs. I’ll need to look at them under a 10x glass and think about if they’re a worthwhile sub or not.

1973 Topps Tarjetas

These inserts are inspired by the Latin American Winter League cards of the past. We pulled four of this insert in the box, as well.

The names feature a couple we have already come across, Alex Binelas and Hedbert Perez. We also have DJ Gladney and Lenyn Sosa. None appear on the MLB Top 100 Prospect list.

Break notes

A few thoughts, observations, and notes jotted down during the break:

• One tricky part with opening a prospect or minor league product is not knowing all the players. I should have opened this box with Nicole, Cardlines’ prospect guru.
• Instead, I took to reviewing MLB’s Top 100 Prospect List to see which players were highly touted.
• The base set design, inspired by the classic 1973 Topps design, really looks great on these cards.
• Minor League team names are a blast. I enjoyed seeing names like the RubberDucks, Loons, Biscuits, and Rumble Ponies, among others.
• The safest bet with any prospect cards is the buy-and-hold approach. There’s a good chance that some of the top prospects or hot players in this box end up becoming busts, while some unknown goes onto a big career. If I look back at this break in a decade, I may cringe at some of the keep vs. sell decisions I made.
• The subsets, which include League Leaders, Prospect Stars, and Boyhood Photos are a great homage to the original 1973 Topps set.
• The black border on the backs of the base cards will make them challenging for grading. Some exhibit chipping right out of the pack (while others do look good).

Thoughts on value and grading

So, was my break of the 2022 Topps Heritage Minors box a success? While the hits weren’t anything special, I’d have to say yes.

Any time you’re talking about a box that only costs $50, the bar for “success” is fairly low, in my opinion. The pure entertainment value of opening a box, especially one with such a fun link to the history of the hobby. In addition to a couple of hours of entertainment, the box did yield a few lower-value autos and inserts that I’ll list on eBay to recoup some of the purchase price.

And while you can probably question grading cards from this product, I did pull a handful of cards that I’m considering sending into PSA, either because they feature top prospects, are just kinda cool, or both.

A few examples of these include the Bo Jackson 1953 Reprint, a base Triston Casas (I’m a Red Sox fan), and potentially the Lawlar insert. I’ll go through the base cards and see if any other top 10 prospects are in there. They’d be potential subs as well if they look good.

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Final thoughts on breaking a 2022 Topps Heritage Minors Box

If you’re looking for a low-cost break that will yield a couple of autographs and a chance at some of the stars of tomorrow, you can do a lot worse than breaking a box of 2022 Topps Heritage. For the price, it was an entertaining journey through the past and future.

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