2014 Donruss Base Set

I shared a handful of Phillies cards from 2014 Donruss a few days ago. These were cards I had gotten on eBay. I've now acquired a hobby box on eBay and can form some better opinions.

Details below but I think this is a solid, if dull attempt to recreate the Donruss brand. I'll have a later post on the inserts to the set.

#11 Paul Goldschmidt

The first 30 cards are the Diamond Kings subset. The design is taken from 1984 Donruss. Diamond Kings was a subset of the Donruss base set from 1982 through 1991. After that, Diamond Kings became an insert set, not part of the regular cards. The box only had 5 of the 30. They don't seem to be short printed.

#31 Michael Choice

The next 15 cards are the "Rated Rookie" subset. These are rookie cards as MLB has defined the term, that is, the first card of the player in either the year they made their major league debut, or the year after.  They have the same design as the base cards, front and back, with the addition of the Rated Rookie logo. Donruss seems to have started using this logo in 1984 and used it through 1995.

#133 Hyun-Jin Ryu

 There are also random cards with Panini's Rookie Card logo scattered through the set.

#190 Nolan Ryan

The last 15 cards of the 200-card set are retired players. The only significant difference between these and the other cards is that they don't have a player's union logo on the back.

My opinions:

I really want to like this set, but I'm feeling pretty lukewarm. Without seeing a single card the set already has a built-in problem in that it is not licensed.

Another issue for me. Pretty much every card looks like this:

#159 Pablo Sandoval

or this:

#138 R. A. Dickey

Either the card features a batter swinging or a pitcher during his throw. There are no horizontal cards as the design doesn't lend itself to a horizontal layout. There are very few cards featuring position players on the field and no action shots, like a play at a base, at all. No spectacular catches, no off-balance throws, no collisions at the plate. The pitchers are all in about the same spot in their delivery. No follow-through shots, getting signs from the catcher or mound conferences. About the only exception to this is that almost all the catchers are in gear and maybe getting ready to throw.

#142 Yan Gomes

I'm afraid this makes for a pretty boring set.

The other problem is that the cards are printed kind of dark. I've brightened them up a little in Photoshop but in many of the cards, the photos and background are too dark. The background, when it is anything but red or orange is sometimes just a solid black band like this card.

#200 Don Mattingly

Black baseballs on a dark blue background? Your guess is as good as mine.

2014 Topps Parallels

It's official, Topps has gone off the deep end with parallels. In 2013, Topps had 10 parallel cards, Black, Camo, Emerald Foil, Gold, Pink, Platinum, Walmart Blue, Target Red, Toys R Us Purple and Silk. This year year they have 14 (or 15 if you count the Power Play cards). In an earlier post I had wished that Topps would come out with a color bordered base card. A commentator pointed out that there are enough color bordered cards to satisfy anyone. I'd wish for a color bordered base set and fewer parallels. And don't forget that we have Topps Opening Day coming, with it's parallels.

I pulled a few of the parallels from what I bought locally and decided to see what I could get on eBay.

Topps Base

Plain old white border.

Topps Black

Topps Black has been around since 2008. This is the first I've seen. This year the cards are numbered to 63. I think they were numbered to 62 last year. I'm too lazy to see if it changes each year. I got this one on eBay. It's hard to tell from the scan, but the borders aren't jet black. There are flecks of gray, or maybe silver, in the black.

Topps Camo

Topps Camo first appeared in 2011. What is the point of this? The cards are numbered to 99. Another eBay find.

Topps Red Foil

New this year, it uses the same technology as the Topps Emerald Foil from last year. Baseball as seen through blood-colored glasses. These are not numbered and I pulled 5 of them.

Topps Gold

The Topps Gold Parallel has been around in one fashion or another since 1992. It's current incarnation goes back to 2001. I think that's the year they started numbering the cards to the year of issue. It's usually not too hard to pull one from a blaster box. I got 3 this year.

Topps Pink

This is the second year for Topps Pink. Do we really need pink-bordered baseball cards? These are numbered to 50. I actually pulled this from one of the packs I bought at Toys R Us.

Topps Platinum

Topps Platinum has been around since 2006. These are 1 of 1 cards which I've never seen. Good luck buying one on eBay. There were priced much more than anyone should ever pay for a baseball card. I noticed on eBay that a few dealers were describing Topps Black as Platinum.

Topps Clear

Another new parallel, these are printed on clear acetate and numbered to 10. Also pretty pricey on eBay I almost got one at a reasonable price but got out bidded at the last minute.

Topps Green

Yet another new parallel and unnumbered. I got this on eBay. That's a sickly shade of green if you ask me.

Topps Yellow

Also new and unnumbered. I pulled four of these. Yellow does not scan well. I had to fool around with this in Photoshop in order to get the border color right. It left Mike looking a bit jaundiced. There have been very few yellow bordered sets since 1991 Fleer and that's just as well.

Topps Blue Walmart

There have been different Target and Walmart parallels since about 2008. The Walmart cards have been this shade of blue since 2012. All you need to do is buy a blaster at Walmart and you get 2 per pack.

Topps Red Target

And Target has been this shade of red since 2012.

Topps Purple Toys R Us

I don't know how long these have been around. I first became aware of them last year. There don't seem to be Toys R Us blasters. These came in Toys R Us blister packs with one pack of cards and 2 purple cards.

Topps Silk

Topps Silk has been around since at least 2008. These are numbered to 50. The silk card is encased in a regular card sized plastic border. These can be pricey on eBay as well but there are a lot of them for sale and I found this at a reasonable price. The 'cards' are blank on the back and don't carry a card number. And there are only 100 of them, instead of the 331 in Topps Series 1.

Topps Power Players

This is a contest card, one of those where you get a code number on the back for a web site. I pulled 3 of these. The card front is the same as the player's regular card with the addition of the Power Players logo.

2014 MBL Teeny Mates

So I went into a local Target yesterday looking for 2014 Topps Heritage. No luck. But I did see this display.

To the right was a display of Hobbit Chibis (unless you have a daughter who's into Japanese you probably don't know what a Chibi is, so here's a link). Next to that were Walking Dead Chibis (seriously).


If you're a self respecting baseball card collector, who couldn't find what he was looking for and you saw this display of Teeny Mates, what would you do? I don't know what you would do, but, at the urging of my anime-loving daughter, I bought two packs.

Here's what I got.

They are about 1 inch tall and cute as a button. Even so, since I got the Phillie, I won't be buying any more. If anyone out there in blogland has the Astro figure, I'll trade one of the other three for it.

In the meantime, my box of 2014 Donruss arrived on Saturday. It's time to get to work on it.

Random Cards From My Collection #58

The random number generator popped up some interesting cards today.

Card #11180
1998 Fleer Tradition #50 Jeff Bagwell

Comments on the card: I always liked 1998 Fleet Tradition. Nice full-bleed printing on the front and back. Bagwell always had a weird batting stance. It's hard to tell how he managed to end up in this position.
How/When acquired: Don't know but probably got it new.

Card #8226
1995 Finest #142 Mark Langston

Comments on the card: The third year of Finest and one of my favorite Finest designs. For some reason I left the 'protective film' on. There was a lot of controversy over this film back in those days.
How/When acquired: I got this in a repack in 2007.

Card #972
1996 Fleer Tiffany #180 Wade Boggs

Comments on the card: For a few years in the mid-1990s, the base Fleer set was produced with no gloss. Of course, the had a parallel set with gloss, called Tiffany. Very late 1980s.
How/When acquired: Don't know.

Card #42219
1991 Studio #105 Rickey Henderson

Comments on the card: The very first year of Studio. Although Donruss later ran the concept into the ground, it was a revolutionary set when it first appeared.
How/When acquired: I paid $11.25 for the entire set on eBay. I'd had about half the set before that. Only $0.04/card, so not a bad price.

Card #9385
1987 Fleer Glossy #186 Dan Schatzeder

Comments on the card: By luck, here's the 1987 version of Fleer Glossy. Topps, Fleer and Score all put out glossy versions of their sets, available only as a boxed set. It was Topps in those days who called their set Tiffany.
How/When acquired: Don't know.

Card #3999
1995 Pinnacle #21 Don Mattingly

Comments on the card: The first full bleed, gold foil stamped cards appeared in 1991. By 1995, Fort Knox was being depleted.
How/When acquired: Don't know.

Card #20132
1990 Reading Phillies Star #36 Don McCormick

Comments on the card: There were several companies putting out minor league team sets in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
How/When acquired: Don't know.

Card #14583
1989 Topps #123 Spike Owen

Comments on the card: If you're got a 2014 Topps 1989 Mini close by you can see what they did. It won't tell you why, however.
How/When acquired: Don't know.

Card #24281
2007 Topps #223 Astros

Comments on the card: Instead of complaining again of how much I hate this set, I'll just comment that it's been a few years since Topps has had team cards like this in it's set.
How/When acquired: Paid $0.15 in a Blaster box in 2007.

Card #10536
1989 Topps #530 Nolan Ryan

Comments on the card: Although I'm not a set collector, I have this entire set thanks to repacks. In fact, that's how I got this card.
How/When acquired: Paid $0.08 in a repack in 2008.

2014 Donruss - First Peek

I recently bought a lot of assorted 2013-2014 Phillies cards on eBay. In the mix were 4 Phillies from the new 2014 Donruss set put out by Panini. I haven't seen this in the big box stores. I have a hobby box coming from eBay so this will be just a peek.

Panini has chosen to go retro on this set. The design is based on 1987 Donruss with a white border instead of black. In that original set, the baseball banner were the same on each card, here, the color band is based on a team color. Of course no team logos or names are allowed. Panini continues to go the way of Photoshopping out logos instead of relying on strategic poses. They also chosen to go with the earlier 1980s version of the Donruss logo which I always liked.

The card back is 1980s Donruss all the way.  Note that they've got Utley's last name as Headley. Close, but not the same guy. The card fronts and backs have a nice gloss to them (unlike those 1980s cards). In keeping with the retro theme, there is no foil stamping on the cards.

Here's the others I have.

Lee is coming off a 14-8 season in 2013 and will be key to whatever chances the Phillies have this year.

Halladay signed a one-day contract with the Blue Jays and retired after spending most of last year on the disabled list.

Based on a couple of good years with the Mets and especially last year's Pirates, Byrd signed a $24MM, 3-year contract with the Phillies, his original team.