{"id":6383,"date":"2019-05-21T23:08:57","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T23:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/?p=6383"},"modified":"2019-05-21T23:08:57","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T23:08:57","slug":"boo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/?p=6383","title":{"rendered":"Boo!"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Major League Baseball has for many years awarded Topps a monopoly to print baseball cards with a team’s logo and name.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

So where does that leave the other guys?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In my opinion, in a bad place.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

If other companies want to issue baseball cards, they may not show the logo on the cap or the team’s name and city on the jersey. For me, this makes for a very unsatisfying product. <\/p>\r\n

The card doesn’t look right. It’s like looking at a photo of Miss Universe dressed in the clothing you see below. I want to see what’s not<\/u> showing<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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There’s a reason why Major League Baseball wants to limit the number of baseball card sets. Back in the day a variety of companies were awarded licenses to print cards with logos and team\/city names. The result was “the junk era,” a period of time when baseball cards were printed in such excessive quantities that the word overkill<\/em> doesn’t begin to adequately tell the tale. Card were made by Topps, Fleer, Donruss, Score, Sportsflix, Upper Deck, Conlon, Pinnacle et al. Baseball Card Stores were everywhere, dumping countless cards on the baseball card buying public. Now, twenty-five years later, most of those cards are considered “junk.”<\/p>\r\n

Right now, as best I can see, Donruss is the only baseball card issuer other than Topps. It’s not like these folks don’t know how to make a nice product, that’s for sure. After a bumpy start in 1981, with a nicely designed set that was undermined by some poor photography on many of its cards, Donruss improved its cards significantly and really hit its stride in 1983. Here are a few examples of that year’s issue:<\/p>\r\n

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Then in 1984 Donruss brought out what many collectors consider to be one of the most beautiful sets ever. It featured a totally redesigned format, with sharp photography of the players whether in action or portrait mode, blurred backgrounds and an uplifting crop of swirling, curved lines near the cards’ base. In the same year, Donruss introduced “chase” cards, available only in packs. These Living Legends cards featured Gaylord Perry and Rollie Fingers (Card A) and Carl Yastrzemski and Johnny Bench (Card B).\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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In 1985 Donruss presented its iconic Rated Rookie logo, which served to highlight those young players who had a real chance of being an impact player, or even a star.\u00a0 Rated Rookie cards proved to be very popular with collectors, and while not every one of the players selected succeeded, the young man below certainly worked out, and made it to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.<\/p>\r\n

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In short, what you had was a vibrant company that was innovative and brought out a very nice product that was well accepted with many collectors.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Donruss is now owned by Panini, so I’m not certain who is calling the shots over there. The designs and graphics are up to par, but for me the overall card is lacking. Several adjectives come to mind, including absent, flawed and deficient. Here are a few examples from their recent issues:<\/p>\r\n

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Now it’s your turn. What’s your opinion? Do you like these Donruss cards? Does the lack of a logo or team and\/or city name make a difference to you? Please share your opinion in the comments section. Thanks!<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\u00a0<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Major League Baseball has for many years awarded Topps a monopoly to print baseball cards with a team’s logo and name. So where does that leave the other guys? In my opinion, in a bad place. If other companies want to issue baseball cards, they may not show the logo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[379],"class_list":["post-6383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baseball-cards","tag-donruss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6383"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6529,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6383\/revisions\/6529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}