Stage 1 of My Set Building Process: Sampling

I'm arriving a little late on the scene with a Heritage post.  Heritage hasn't traditionally been a set I'm all that into, but I think this year's set intrigues me.  I "think" it intrigues me I say.  Sometimes I know immediately if I like a set, and sometimes I need to go through a steps to know for sure, like this: 

I suppose this isn't a Heritage post as much as it's a forum for me to articulate my set collecting process (see above). For a good review of 2013 Heritage,  I direct anyone interested  to these fantastic posts about the set from dayf. 

Basically, when I set I'm maybe interested in comes out, I start like this:

Stage 1:  Sampling

If I'm not certain I'm going to go all in and collect a set, I like to test the waters with a rack pack or a couple of wax packs.  There's little money spent, I get enough cards to get a sense of the set, and I can count on at least pulling 1 or 2 cards that I'd want for my collection anyway.

The sampling phase is:


A first date over lunch
Renting a game at Red Box
The first sip of the first jack and coke
The free 30 second listen of a song on iTunes

My sampling of 2013 Heritage was:

This was the first card out of the pack- a good omen for me I guess.  Moustakas a player I collect, mostly because he was someone I was able to see play several times in person while he was in the area playing for the Royals AA team.  A pretty sharp card I think.

Later in the pack was this Cliff Lee card, another of my favorites.  Former Razorback, former Ranger.   Two big feathers in his cap. 

I'm under the impression that there are mixed reviews on Heritage out there.  I'm not completely sure I'm going to chase the set, but the criticism I don't understand is the complaint about the card stock.  I'm with dayf on this one and like the card stock just fine.  More than fine in fact.

So I got a couple of cards I like and I'm on board with the look and feel of the set.  But I'm not all in yet.  The next phase is gathering, which means I need to open a blaster (or two) and get more context on the set.  I need to see if inserts take up a lot of space, and if so, do I like them?  My instinct is that this is a set where I won't give a rip about building the insert sets, so I hope the blaster I get doesn't have a lot of them.

Once I have gathered some cards (more on that later this week when I have a blaster to open) I can decide if I'm collecting, the final phase of building a set, or if I'm in danger of simply accumulating these cards.  I'll explain the difference between "collecting" and as I see it, it's ugly step sister "accumulating", later as well.