1996 Donruss Phillies

Yesterday, I featured the Phillies cards from 1996 Stadium Club Members Only Parallel set I recently acquired. I also just bought the Phillies cards from the 1996 Donruss set. There were 18 cards in the set and I only had 5 of them.

Superficially, these cards are a lot like the Stadium Club cards. A full bleed-photo on the front and back. I think that's Shawon Dunston of the Cubs trying to dislocate Van Slyke's shoulder.

It also featured some decent photos. But Donruss wasn't a premier set like Stadium Club. The photos aren't quite as crisp and the card stock is a bit thinner.T he front and back are glossy but lighter than Stadium Club.

The glaring difference is in the front design. In fact, that block of dufex foil on the front comes pretty close to ruining the entire set.

The block is quite distracting. Your eye gets pulled right to it. Sure there is some information there, the Donruss logo, the team logo, the players position and uniform number, and the team name and home city are all geometrically arranged. It's maybe the worst way this information has ever been presented on a baseball card.

The back of the card helps to make up for the poor design of the front. There are career stats, laid out in a clear manner, easy to read. The player name, position and card number are easy to read. I like the large team logo in the background. And with all that other stuff, there's still room for a good sized player photo. Donruss did a pretty good job of listing stats through most of the 1990s.

When there weren't enough stats to fill the back they filled in some of the space with biographical information.  This is a common design element which is way better than leaving a large blank space.

Here that dreadful block is covering the center of the action. Keven Jordan, by the way, is part of the all Keven infield that the Phillies could have fielded in 1995, if they had wanted to. In addition to Jordan, they had infielders Keven Stocker, Keven Elster and Kevin Sefcik. In addition, they had outfielder Keven Flora. 5 Kevins on the field at once would probably have set a major league record.