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.

Kids, Leave The Rubber Bands Off The Cards

It was so cool to take stacks of cards and rubber band them together. It was the thing to do for many a generation of card collecting kids. Well, we know better today. Keep the rubber bands off the cards!!

My friend was cleaning out his basement, when he came across a suitcase full of old cards. By old, I mean mostly from the overproduced period of the late eighties and early nineties. My friend thought he had riches upon riches. It almost broke my heart to tell him that they were nearly worthless.

"You don't know that"!

Unfortunately, I do. I know what I'm talking about here. I came to terms, a long time ago, that my heyday of collecting came when the cardboard is usually worth more when recycled.

"You don't know what people are willing to pay for something if they really want it bad enough"!

That is true, but I can stake my reputation that at least 99% of what I found in the suitcase was priceless. And by priceless, I mean that the value per card would be so low that no price could be affixed to the majority of the cards.

I knew I was in for an adventurous night when my friend strolled in with a hardshell powder blue suitcase from the seventies. It even had a mirror embedded into the inside top. It was hideous!

I opened the suitcase and gazed upon a cornucopia of beautiful garbage. To be fair, there were some decent cards in there. Anything before 1986, I considered nice. From 1986 until 1994 there was trash upon trash. There could have been a few nice cards, except for the fact that they were nicked, bent and scuffed beyond salvage.

There were even water damaged cards in the suitcase. Unidentified sticky substances and rubber banded nightmares permeated the case. It was a disaster. The Mark Grant card featured in the picture above, actually had the rubber band dried and stuck to the cardboard. The rubber band crumbled to the touch, but Mark Grant had two lines of dried rubber that weren't easily coming off.

Let this be a lesson, kids. Always take care of your cards!

1990 Donruss Bonus MVPs

Bonus MVPs was an insert in late 1980s and early 1990 Donruss. The 1990 version featured
26 cards. They had the same basic design as the regular cards. Bright red with confetti scattered up and down the borders. The photos are all posed and the background is MVP repeated over and over.

There is nothing really special about these except for the existence of an error card involving John Smoltz. As you can see there are two versions of this card, one with a picture of Smoltz, the other with a picture of his teammate, Tom Glavine.

You have to wonder how such a thing happens. My guess is that in 1990, neither of these guys was real well known. Both were coming off their first full year of pitching. It's hard to imagine someone in the baseball card manufacturing business not being to recognize both of these guys on sight, but they weren't always as famous as they are today.

I'd had the correct version of this card for some time. I just
recently acquired the Glavine version in a pack of Donruss from a Fairfield repack box. Who says there isn't still some fun to be had from an 18 year-old-pack of cards?

When I logged the card into my database I didn't really look at it closely and didn't notice the error. It was when I was going to put it in my Smoltz binder that I thought, hey, wait a minute, that's not John Smoltz!

2004 Diamond Kings Framed Silver

This card is a 2-ply card. The gray border is actually a frame applied to the base card. There have been other cards published with frames like this but the 2004 and 2005 Donruss Diamond King sets took it to another level.

I really like the 2004 set. I bought a box of these on eBay, paying, what is for me, an enormous price (I paid almost $90 for the 60-card box). But I really do love the cards. The base card Soriano is also shown below. The cards have a linen-type finish and have an old-timey look. The color smudge behind the player looks a lot like what Topps is doing now with their Allen & Ginter cards.

I just got this framed card in the mail. Besides it being a cool card, the other reason I decided to feature it is because, for me, it is a very frustrating set.

I think that collecting the base set would probably not be too difficult. But, in general, I'm not a set collector.
For me, I'd be happy to have a good collection of the base cards and also have at least one of each of the insert cards from the set. But for this set, such a goal is probably impossible. This set has 105 different insert cards. This isn't the worst set in this regard. As soon as I get it, I'll be posting a card from the 2005 Prime Patches set, which as over 200 inserts.

In the Diamond Kings set, most of the inserts are a variation on the base card and feature the same players as the base set. Here I've shown the base Soriano card and the framed silver card. The silver refers to the flavor of foil on the card. This same card is available as: Sepia, Bronze, Bronze Sepia, Platinum, Platinum Sepia, Silver, Silver Sepia, Framed Bronze, Framed Bronze Sepia, Framed Gold, Framed Gold Sepia, Framed Platinum Black, Framed Platinum Black Sepia, Framed Platinum White, Framed Platinum White Sepia, Framed Platinum Gray, Framed Platinum Gray Sepia, Framed Silver and Framed Silver Sepia. For those counting that's 20 Soriano cards with the same picture on them. Then there are 20 cards with the same picture and one or two relics. These follow basically the same pattern of frames and foil variations. Then there are another 20 cards, with the same variations but with an autograph. And most of these cards are serial numbered to anywhere from 1 to 150. Well, you get the picture. I could spend the rest of my life trying to collect all the inserts from this set.

Die-cuts part deux

After discussing some classic die-cuts just last week, what arrives in the mail this week but a modern take on the technology? Welcome to my collection multi-MVP and lifetime "I Had to Work for Ted Turner" award winner Dale Murphy, resplendent in 1980s blue-on-blue-on-blue. The card places him (and his 1987 Donruss All-Star Pop-ups brethren) under the Astrodome roof in Houston. He made the team despite a relative lull in production, with an OPS+ of "only" 121. (This was sandwiched between OPS+ years of over 150.)

Some think almost 400 homers, back-to-back MVPs, and six different seasons slugging over .500 make a case for the Hall of Fame. Murphy certainly scared pitchers more than most hitters in the 1980s, even given a penchant for striking out. This photo clearly happens after contact, perhaps with Dale shooting another double into the left-center gap.

As good as card photography gets these days, it was sub-par during the 1980s and well-timed shots like this were few and far between. The same company's regular issue from that year went with a is-he-hunky-or-dreamy shot and even his 1987 Diamond King looks distracted. At least the pop-up puts us into the game.

Once you punch out the card and stand Dale up, I can't help but notice the copious Astrodome advertising just past his shoulders. Around the outfield, it's the Marlboro man, Budweiser, Coke, and FirstCity Bank. OK, Coke is acceptable for kids, but ciggies and beer? Did we learn nothing from the airbrush arteests of the late 1970s? I imagine a Friday-night-working editor seeing the ads in the background, scratching the crown of his thinning scalp, and saying "screw it, it's just a gimmicky pop-up set."

Die-cuts and ducats

I love this card, #5 from the 1934-36 Batter-Up set. It shows off the die-cut process seen in several issues from the 1920s and 30s.

As you can see from the cut line, kids could fold back the top half of the card and pose them vertically. On this Batter-Up card, NY Giants legend Carl Hubbell demonstrates a Golden Age leg kick and delivery, his knuckles only a few inches clear of the mound. It's an excellent photo for the set concept and almost jumps off the card as-is.

Other die-cut set competitors, like the 1920s Major League die-cuts and (super-rare) 1934 R304s, used a one-size-fits-all-players die, but the Batter-Ups have a different silhouette for each card, an expensive process the producer hoped would stand out--or up--from the competition. (The fact they released the set over a three-year period probably reflects the costs involved.)

Our generation saw Donruss dip their toe in the water with some 1980s pop-up sets. Some years, they went out in wax packs with regular cards. Others saw them as oddly matched add-ons to their oversize Action All-Stars, arguably a gimmick themselves. Even though I keep the cards in pages like other sets, I like their physical 3-D nature and opportunity for interaction. As a kid, I arranged my cards around a diamond on the bedroom floor, the better for real-game imaginings. It would've been great to see more sets with classic players and nice composition like the Batter-Ups at the time. ("Hubbell kicks and fires! Joe Cronin swings and smokes a liner toward right field, but Gehringer reaches out to snare it! Whatta play!") I did have a Cronin card at the time--as a faceless disc in my Cadaco-Ellis All Star Baseball board game. Something that recaptured the look of the 40s or 50s era would've been cool. (OK, ASB was cool. I propose my idea as cooler.)

The Batter-Ups aren't an easy set to complete these days, both for availability and expense. At 192 cards, it's nearly the size of Goudey's signature 1933 set and produced in considerably smaller numbers. You'll spend a lot of time and money trying for all the Hall-of-Famers and high numbers. (On the plus side, no pesky Ruth or Gehrig!)

Commons missing the "stand" outline typically go for less than $10. This Hubbell, creased, digned, but otherwise intact, cost about $50. If you like the cards and are on a budget, I recommend looking for cool poses in low grades and high-contrast colors. (They printed the set in several shades and the "warm" colors look muddier than sepia or gray.) Blank backs also mean you can mount or display the cards without missing out on stats or stories. As the 1934 All-Star Game starter, ol' Carl could even be the centerpiece for a 9-man National League lineup...

Stamps On Cards

I try to avoid posting the same card on two different sites, but I'll make an exception in this case. Why? Because this card comes with it's own postage!

Granted, it would never cover the cost of shipping the card today or even when the card was released in 2005, but the fact that a postage stamp is on a baseball card is awesome. It adds a whole different dimension to card collecting. The fact that the stamp depicts a play at the plate makes this card even more unique.

Throw in the piece of jersey, and we've got ourselves a very interesting card that seems to want to reach out to all people and say, "Love me. Buy me. Let me be in your collection".

I wasn't in the hobby when this card was produced. I was only relying on eBay to buy an occasional White Sox team set to show my support for my favorite team. I really had no clue that these existed until the lure of baseball cards pulled me back in last year.

This card seems like the perfect ploy to introduce baseball cards to stamp collectors. Plus, it offers the card collector something a bit different to collect, while still staying in the comfortable realm of card collecting. It's a perfect combination!

1991 Donruss #744 Dr. Dirt & Mr. Clean

I remember Lenny Dykstra and Dale Murphy being huge deals in the 80's and early 90's. I do remember both as being on the Phillies. I associate them with different teams though. Dale will always be a Brave to me and Dykstra will always be a Met. I can never shake that.

This card is odd. This was also when anyone who sniffed a baseball ended up on a card. This was the time of filler cards. Not that two players of this caliber didn't deserve a card together. It's just overkill though. On the other hand, it is nice to see.

This card feels like a free promo for a Philadelphia area dry cleaner. Dr. Dirt is kinda dirty looking, but in a clean kind of way. Sort of like Dennis the Menace. Mr. Clean lost the earring, grew some hair and traded in his floor cleaner for a Phillies uniform.

This is where gimmick cards got their start. Not with this specific card, but cards like it in this era. Could this be the inspiration for the Studio line that Donruss put out in 1991? Maybe. This reminds me of two buddies in their softball uniforms. After many beers, they decide to go to Sears and get a portrait done in their uniforms. It didn't matter that one played all day and the other sat on the bench watching. They had the uniforms that looked like real major league uniforms.

I hope Lenny and Dale got some good money for that dry cleaners spot. I'll bet they had no idea that it would end up on a card. That should be a lesson to all players. Don't take show up to Sears in your uniform. They will get you to pose in front of a cheesy background. It will end up on a card.