1980 Donruss Prototypes

Topps monopoly over baseball cards was starting to crumble by the late seventies. Donruss and Fleer were both starting to make headway into the hobby, but they would still need a court decision to turn in their favor.

In anticipation to the late 1980 court ruling, Donruss made prototypes for cards, so they weren't caught off guard by a quick decision.

Donruss created three different prototypes. One of Reggie Jackson, one of George Brett and one of a blank card.

As you can see, this design is in line with the first official baseball sets from Donruss. There are bright primary colors and lots of precise lines. Donruss took so much care in this prototype, that the pictures look better than some of the pictures actually used in the 1981 set.

In fact, Donruss liked the picture of George Brett so much that they used it on two different cards in the 1981 set. Donruss used a cropped version of Reggie Jackson's prototype picture of one of his three cards in the 1981 set.

The most amazing aspect of the 1980 Donruss prototype is how similar it appears compared to the 1980 Topps set. Both feature flags wrapped around the top and bottom of the card and a large area for a picture.

Below is an uncut sheet of all three prototypes.

Shameless self promotion

In addition to occasionally writing for this blog, I do my own blog called Capewood's Collections. But you already know this because my blog is listed in the side bar.

I've been toying with doing a baseball card only blog of my own. I got some encouraging feedback on my idea from several bloggers (including Steve here) so I've gone forward with my idea of making what will essentially be an on-line encyclopedia of baseball cards. Some of the feedback I got suggested this would be better done as a wiki instead of a blog. I had no idea how to set up such a thing but it turned out to be easier than I thought. And this will work better as a wiki (after all a wiki is designed to be an on-line encyclopedia).

The site is ready for the public. It can be found at http://baseballcardref.pbwiki.com/. I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out and visit often. I am open to suggestions on how to make it better. At some point I may solicit other contributors but its too early for that.

I'm starting with cards from 1980. The Pete Rose card is the first card to be posted.

1980 Topps Superstar Photo Cards

I was looking for images of 1980 Topps cards on Beckett.com and saw these cards listed. As I am wont to do when I hear about some odd-ball card, I went on eBay to see if I could get some. I snagged 5 packs for $0.99 and $5.00 for shipping.

The cards are billed as being 5x7 inches but are actually a bit smaller than that. According to the Sports Collector's Digest 2007 catalog these cards were produced as a test issue by Topps and most of the run was bought up by speculators. They feature a glossy photo of the player on the front with a facsimile signature in light blue ink. The back of the card just has the player's name and team and the card's number.

There were 2 versions issued. The more common gray back and a white back version. The white back version run about 3x the value of the gray. The ones I bought look to be white. The packs I bought don't seem to have been real well cared for. Although the cards are not damaged, they have a musty smell like they've been in someone's basement for the past 28 years.

The checklist is part of the packaging. This piece opens up and the cellophane wrapper is stapled in the fold, I got a good selection of 1980's players. In addition to Stargell I got Steve Garvey, Jim Palmer, Fred Lynn, Dave Winfield, Bruce Sutter, Cecil Cooper (currently the manager of the Astros), Jerry Koosman (I got 2 of these), Darrell Porter, Jason Thompson, Kent Tekulve, Rick Bosetti (??), Larry Parrish and Gary Carter.

If you act now you can still get these on eBay although the packs aren't available. Either loose cards or whole cases of cards (from former speculators, no doubt) are available. There are also similar football cards.