February for most is still the dead of winter, but for some it is the true start of baseball season and it's spring training schedule. For collectors, February brings us the new products.

Topps heritage is always one of the early year products and around January there is always buzz on what the new product will look like and who will be in it. There are also those "surprises" that come with any product, but especially with heritage.

Many people opened up 2008 Topps Heritage and did a few things, first they opened every pack and pulled out inserted cards, these included chrome cards, game-used cards, autographs cards and sub set cards. These are considered the true gems of the products. What is left is a massive stack of base cards. These are cards that make up the base set and some of them are rarer than others. Most of the time these base cards are not that sought after, but on occasion topps throws us a curve ball.

The Johan Santana card above, was one of those surprises. A special insert card that had no markings on it. It looked at first like all the other base cards, but the true heritage collectors, those set building maniacs, spotted that this card pictured him with his new team...the New York Mets. Collectors then realized that this was a rare card and instantly the search was on. Suddenly that stack worthless commons could contain gold!

The anticipation in 2009 is in the air. Could it be a back variation, or team variation? Could their be a corrected error card on the checklist? You never know what is going to be out there. The next time you are sitting down with a pack or two of topps heritage, keep your eye out for the shinny cards yes, but don't forget that some of those other cards might be rare too!