Set Appreciation Post #22 - 2001 Donruss Classics

Upper Deck had Century Legends and Fleer had Greats of the Game. Donruss Classics was not quite as good as either, but it's still had solid product. The largest fault being the inclusion of rookie cards on the checklist, but we will get into those details later in the post.  

Here is the base card design....

Lots of gray. I do not always love card designs that are overrun by neutral colors, but I really like the looks of these cards with the color photo offering contrast. I also like the Donruss Classics logo on the top of the card with the player name, jersey number, and player position on the front. It seems like a lot, but all the different design elements are well-placed and spaced out on the front. My only qualm is the team name being split across the top on both sides of the Classics logo.  

Very well done. Here is the back of the card.  

Nice write-up with easy-to-read stats and biographical information. I find it interesting that write-ups on these cards reference events from within the 2001 season even though they are a 2001 release. Not a usual practice in the baseball card biz, but really cool to see considering that the majority of baseball cards are released later in the season.  

Donruss Classics is a product supposedly focused on veteran and Hall of Fame players, but the base set also includes 50 rookie cards, which do not really seem to fit with this product. The rookie cards are serial numbered to 585 copies. Two biggest rookie cards are Pujols and Ichiro.  

This might seem silly to complain about a Pujols rookie, but Playoff/Donruss made a ton of different baseball card products during the 2001 calendar year. There were plenty of opportunities to make cards of Pujols and Ichiro, including them here seems off-brand. The inclusion of the rookie cards diminish the overall checklist of Donruss Classics. I understand that rookie cards can be all the craze, but the equivalent Upper Deck, Fleer, and Topps products to Donruss Classics all were able to do just fine without having a bunch of Triple A players in the set.  

Wait. 

There are even more cards on the checklist, but they actually fit the product.   

There are another 48 cards after the rookie cards that are "Legend" cards. The Legends cards came one per box, or one per two mini boxes. Yes, this had boxes inside of boxes. The Legends cards have a cult following. There are plenty people who love these cards and collect them. Actually fairly affordable if you can track down all 48 of them. They are serial numbered to 1,755 copies, but a few of them can be hard to find. I like the gold/sepia color on these cards. The player photos are a mix between black and white, sepia, and color depending on the age of the player. 

Good looking cards.  

So, let's do a few favorites.  

My favorite Cardinals cards are the Pujols shown above, along with the Rick Ankiel.  

I love the red and white home uniforms against the gray background of the card.  

Favorite former Durham Bulls player is Ryan Klesko with his lamb chop sideburns.  

 

My favorite odd card is Hideo Nomo on the Red Sox.......

Hideo Nomo played on the Red Sox???  

Apparently, Hideo Nomo was on four different teams in four years, but that included a no-hitter with the Red Sox. I remember him with the Mets and Brewers, not so much with the Tigers and Red Sox. I need to start using him when I play Immaculate Grid.  

There are also autographs.  

The Hall of Famers are one of the big highlights of Donruss Classics.  

The checklist for the autograph set is deep with good names and they are on-card autographs.    

There are also rookie autographs, but.......

They have ugly silver stickers and are players like Brandon Larson. 

Just stick with the old guys.  

One last thing. Let me tell you about the benches from the dugout in Three Rivers Stadium.

Playoff/Donruss bought one of them at some point in the late 1990s and used it to create a insert set.   

Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell have cards in the set, which is cool, but Vlad Guerrero in Three Rivers Pack? I don't care if he hit two home runs in a game against the Pirates, this is a reach.  

So, how does Donruss Classics rate? 

Out of 5 Wool E. Bull's?  

Solid set, but not as good as its competitors.  

Set Appreciation Post #18 - 2001 Donruss

Donruss. 

What is the first thing that comes to mind?

I bet most collectors would go with Rated Rookies......

or Diamond Kings......

Maybe if you're under 30, the answer is unlicensed baseball cards. 

After Pinnacle went bankrupt in 1999, there were no Donruss sets for two years. In 2001, Playoff attempted to revive the brand, plus do some revisionist history and create Donruss sets for both the 1999 and 2000 calendar years. It was interesting to say the least, but ultimately not very satisfying in large part due to the fact that Playoff messed up the two must-haves in any Donruss set. 

See above.   

The 2001 Donruss boxes included a graded card as a box topper. I believe Beckett was launching their grading service and Playoff was relaunching Donruss. The graded cards were largely late 1980s Donruss issues that included the likes of Devon White and B.J. Surhoff. Nothing wrong with either player, but not many collectors want one of their graded rookie cards as a box topper.  

What did I pull?  

 

Gary Sheffield was a good player, but what is the value of a 7.5 grade Gary Sheffield 1989 Donruss? Didn't Beckett originally charge $10 when they first started grading cards?  There is zero chance that this card is worth $10.  

Let's check out the back for the breakdowns on that 7.5 grade.

I am going to issue a spoiler here and let you know that Playoff went bankrupt too, which is why we have the unlicensed Donruss set produced by Panini. It took four years, but in retrospect it should have been four months.  

Here is the base card design.  

I honestly like the appearance of these cards. The colored borders are nice with the star background fading out from top to bottom. Simple player name bar with the player position and team logo on each side. I even like the 20th Anniversary logo that Playoff stamped on each card. Donruss was not a very expensive set either ($1.99 per pack), getting this across the finish line should have been as simple as Playoff providing a decent ser of Diamond King and Rated Rookie cards.

Here is the back of the card..... 

Again, it's simple, but it does the job for a base Donruss set. If Playoff really wanted to win me over, they would have gone landscape and used the standard 1980s Donruss card back. That's probably asking too much.  This is fine though. Plus, these cards have on-base percentage. We can't replace Barry Bonds if he leaves as a free agent, but we maybe (not) able to recreate him through the aggregate. 

Almost sure Billy Beane said that once.  

One of the things that stands out to me as I flipped through the cards in this set was the number of established, veteran players who were in odd places during 2001. I picked seven that stood out to me and got lazy with the scanning.  

All seven in one scan.....

So, that is Eric Davis on the Giants, Rickey Henderson on the Mariners, Jose Canseco on the Angels, Andres Galarraga on the Rangers, David Cone on the Red Sox, David Wells on the White Sox, and Hideo Nomo on the Red Sox. Nomo actually threw a no-hitter on the Red Sox, so maybe that one is not quite as jarring as the rest.

My favorite Cardinals card is Rick Ankiel.  

This was after his yips had started. His cards dried up by the end of 2001 and did not reappear until he came back as an outfielder. I like that you can see the pitch grip in the picture, which appears to be a change-up. The rest of the Cardinals in this set are the standard from the time, McGwire, Edmonds, Kile, Matt Morris, etc. No Pujols even though it was a 2001 product. 

Favorite former Durham Bulls player is Ryan Klesko, largely because he has the lamb chop sideburns on the back photograph. If you are not going to picture him on a surf board for his baseball card, highlighting his sideburns is the next best move.  

Which brings me to the weirdness of Playoff trying to recreate Donruss sets for both 1999 and 2000. This nonsense had never been tried before the 2001 Donruss set and has not been attempted since either. Well, at least I don't think it has been tried again. We are all lucky that everyone learned their lesson with this set.  

I cannot place my hands on many of my imaginary 2000 Donruss cards, which were sold in retail packs, so I will focus my energy on the 1999s, which were sold in hobby packs.  

Players were shown on their 1999 teams on a design that was not nearly as good as the one Playoff used for the 2001 cards. The 2000 cards are not great either.  Although, these do feel really similar to the set designs that Pinnacle was using for Donruss right before they went bankrupt.  

I personally like the back of the 1999 Donruss Jim Edmonds card. The design is nothing great, but Jimmy Edmonds lost his half-shirt Cardinals windbreaker and reverted to back to "Anaheim Jimmy" complete with frosted hair and designer, colored-lens sunglasses.  

Gripes about Yankees fans going to DisneyLand and then filling up Angel Stadium were not included on the back, which is really too bad. If you are going to make up cards from previous years, you might as well do some pre-trade foreshadowing.  

I am not saying Ray Lankford is going to find his own doctor if his knees ever need to be cleaned up, but he's not using the team doctors....

Finding your own doctor. That's not the type of thing that would cause hurt feelings and a trade, right?

Let's get down to business.

This is a Donruss set and we all want to see the Diamond King cards and the Rated Rookies. For me as a long-time collector, I have a really hard time with the 2001 Donruss set because of these two long running brand staples having huge flaws.  

This is the design for the Diamond Kings set.  

The artwork of Sosa is fine, but the giant border stinks. The Diamond Kings logo at the bottom also stinks. Playoff bought all the brand name and imaging rights for all of Pinnacle's old brands, why not use them? I did not scan the back, but the write-up falls short in comparison to previous Diamond Kings sets.  The checklist is also terrible. 

Traditionally, every team got a Diamond Kings card in every Donruss set regardless of where they finished in the standings. When I was in middle school and the Cardinals were medicore at best, I still got a Diamond Kings card of Felix Jose. For 2001, Playoff only included 20 players, which included multiple Braves and Yankees.  

Some players on the checklist were not even deserving of Diamond Kings card.  

Mark McGwire was oft-injured during the 2000 and 2001, but still ended up with a Diamond Kings card. There were plenty of other good choices on those Cardinals teams with Jim Edmonds, Darryl Kile, Matt Morris, and J.D. Drew.  

The 2001 Diamond Kings are a definite negative when grading this set, but nothing compared to the disappointment I have towards the Rated Rookies. Again, Playoff owned the name and branding rights for all of the Pinnacle brands. 

Rated Rookie cards should have the logo. This is the only acceptable answer.  

This is ugly.  

White border, black name bar, Anniversary logo.  Whatever.  I don't card about any of it, because some designer working for Playoff murdered this card by using some middle school quality Microsoft Word Word Art "Rated Rookie" logo. Worse, beyond using the logo at the bottom of the card in color form, they repeated the logo in the background of the border.

How much better does this card look with the standard Rated Rookie logo?  

So, how does it rank?

This set has been out 21 years and I have not forgotten the fact that Playoff screwed up the Rated Rookies and Diamond Kings.

No mercy.  

18. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

17. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

16. 2001 Donruss 

15. 2000 Topps 

14. 2012 Bowman Platinum 

13. 2000 UD Ionix

12. Topps Lineage   

11. 2002 Bowman 

10. 1988 Donruss 

9. 1995 Emotion XL 

8. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

7. 1998 Topps TEK 

6. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

5. 2001 Fleer EX 

4. 1979 Kellogg's 

3. 1998 Metal Universe 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

Set Appreciation Post #9 - 2000 Pacific Paramount Update

There was a 2000 Pacific Paramount Update set?  

Yes.  

Seems pretty random, right? 

Yes.  

Well, there was a lot of really weird stuff going on with this set. Let's check out a base card, which kicks off the weirdness of this set. Right off the bat, the first card seems a little bit off, if you collected Pacific cards around this time.  

Paramount Weird Fact #1- No Garrett Anderson?  What about Darin Erstad? 

 

 

Pacific sets were always set up with the teams arranged alphabetically by the city/state name of the team, with the players organized alphabetically by last name within the team set.  The Anaheim Angels were always the first team.  How many late 1990s or early 2000s Pacific sets had either Garrett Anderson or Darin Erstad as card #1?  

 

The answer is almost all of them.  

Pacific put out 12 different baseball card products in 2000.  Nine of the sets had either Anderson or Erstad as card #1.  Pacific Prism had Erstad, no Garrett Anderson card, but they included Jeff DeVanon (you may not know him for good reason) who had the first card.  I rolled my eyes too.  Vanguard had Troy Glaus as the first card, but only two Angels cards in the set.  

 

Same with the 1998 and 1999 Pacific cards, only Jim Edmonds was still on the team, and before Erstad alphabetically.  

Beyond Jeff DeVanon and Troy Glaus, there was also this Adam Kennedy card in the 2000 Pacific Paramount Update set, which was the first card in the Paramount Update set. 

Weird Paramount Fact #2 - The set was sold through the J.C. Penny Christmas catalog and limited to a print run of just 12,500.  I certainly did not get this set from the J.C. Penny Christmas catalog.  Instead, I got it from a local card shop in St. Louis whose owner ordered the sets for his store out of the J.C. Penny Christmas catalog, because it was loaded with Cardinals players.  

Here are a few.  

Here are three of them.  There is another Cardinals card later in the post.  

Gene Stechschulte is actually a pretty interesting player.  He did not have a very long career, playing three seasons all with the Cardinals in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a middle reliever.  I believe he had some arm or shoulder injuries.  What he is really famous for was hitting a home run in his first at-bat on the first pitch he saw. 

 

 

The Diamondbacks were winning this game 15-1 when Stechschulte hit the home run.  LaRussa put him into the game to pinch hit for the pitcher Mike James.  Stechschulte never threw a pitch in this game, but the Cardinals did use Bobby Bonilla for the ninth.

 

Weird Paramount Fact #3 - I own two copies of this set.  I bought one back in 2000, but also ended up with one a few years ago when a co-worker gave me some of his old baseball cards.   Pacific was a solid card manufacturer.  I cannot remember them ever have major issues with quality control.  However, for some reason there are odd sticker pieces that are attached to random cards in both my copies of the set.  

Again, weird for Pacific to have quality control issues.  

What is even going on here?  

The green striped piece on the Bret Boone card actually looks the same/similar to the bottom border of the card.  Only it's clearly a sticker if you could be here to touch it yourself.  Why is there a giant white sticker over Mike Lamb's head?  We will never know.  

 

If there were actually any rookie cards worth owning in this set, there were would likely be tons of annoying "Ebay 1/1" listing with random stickers all over the cards.  

 

Weird Paramount Fact #4- There are 100 cards on the checklist, but I swear at least 50 of the players in this set were not traded or signed as free agents during the year.  Lots of cards like......

.....Chipper Jones on the Braves.  

 

There is also a Derek Jeter on the Yankees, Tony Gwynn on the Padres, Cal Ripken on the Orioles, Barry Bonds on the Giants (free agent signing in 1993), Scott Rolen on the Phillies (traded in the future), Mark McGwire on the Cardinals (traded 3 years earlier), and Mike Piazza on the Mets (traded two years earlier).  

It feels like someone at Pacific said. "Lets make an Update set!".  A bunch of people sat down and started making a checklist. 

 

"Who got traded or signed as a free agent in 2000?  Ken Griffey, Jim Edmonds, and Juan Gonzalez."

 

They probably wrote down a few players who were rookies, a few free agent signings, and they were still 70 cards short of a set.  

"Meh, let's throw in an ARod card." 

This has to be the all-time record holder for traded/update set with the most players who were never traded, nor signed as a free agent during the calendar year.  

 

Weird, But It's Just The Uniform 

 

One of the best parts of getting out an old update set is looking through the cards to find players you know, on teams you don't remember they were on.  Like all old update sets, I found two players who were in unusual places in 2000.   

 

Rickey Henderson started to the 2000 season with the Mets, but was released and signed with the Mariners in the middle of the season.  He was 41, played 92 games, and managed to steal 31 bases.  Not bad.  I actually kind of remember him being on the Mariners, but it's not like I stayed up and watched a lot of Mariners games.  He was there, I did not watch very often. 

Nomo on the Tigers looks a little strange too.  I always think of him as a Dodger, but he played a lot of other places in between his two stints in LA.  I remembered the Mets and Brewers, but I went and looked him up on Baseball Reference.  The Dodgers traded him to the Mets in 1998, and he went back to the Dodgers in 2001.  In between he appeared, or was on the roster of the Mets, Cubs, Brewers, Phillies, Tigers, and Red Sox.  

Nomo threw a no-hitter on the Red Sox?  

Best Cardinals Player Who Deserved To Be In A Traded Set  

 

Jim Edmonds.  

 

Edmonds was traded to the Cardinals during Spring Training of 2000.  He was scheduled to be a free agent at the end of the season.  The late 1990s/early 2000s Cardinals were good at trading for pending free agents and getting them to sign before they hit the market.  They did this same thing with McGwire and Scott Rolen. 

Best Durham Bulls Player Who Deserved To Be In A Traded Set  

I am going to put two different Bulls players in this section.  I will go with one Minor Leaguer who was promoted to the Majors, along with one Major League who changed teams.  I will do the Major Leaguer first.  

 

 

Klesko appeared for the 1990 Durham Bulls.  After a long run with the Braves, Klesko was traded to the Padres for Reggie Sanders and Wally Joyner.  Love the facial hair.  I believe this was a homecoming of sorts for Klesko, who spent almost all of the second half of his career with the Padres.  Not a Hall of Famer, but a very good hitter. 

 

The former Durham Bulls player who appeared in the set as a Minor League call up was Jeff Sparks.  

 

 

He did not have a really long Major League career.  He only pitched in 23 games between the 1999 and 2000 seasons.  According to his Wikipedia page, his career highlight was a save against the Yankees at the end of the 1999 season.  His Wikipedia page says that he makes YouTube videos with former Dodgers reliever Mike Marshall. 

 

It's true.  

The Bulls get a mention on the back of the Jeff Sparks card.  

Best Player(s) Who Deserved To Be In A Traded Set 

I decided to balance this section with a traded/free agent player and a young player who got called up during the 2000 season.  Veteran player first.  

 

 Seemed like an easy answer.  

 

The rookie card.  Perhaps the only decent rookie card in the entire set.  

 

 Two time Cy Young Award winner in the American League.  His career was really shortened by injuries, but he was Hall of Fame quality when he wasn't hanging out on the disabled list.  He almost had that no-hitter the one time.  

 

 

How Does It Compare?  

 

The design isn't great.  I am not sure all of the weird and quirky aspects of the set are really all that positive.  While I love many things about Pacific Baseball Cards from this era, this is not one of their better efforts.  Where are the parallels?  Where are the interesting die-cut cards?  Paramount Update will occupy the 9th spot for the moment.  

 

Better set next week.  I will go with something a little older too. 

 

9. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

8. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

7. 2000 UD Ionix 

6. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3.1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

They're Here.

I shared a Kent Merker card from an old Durham Bulls set earlier in the week.  It was from the 1997 BellSouth Bulls to Braves set, which I have been trying to track down forever with little luck.  For whatever reason, someone listed half the set on Ebay earlier in the week.  I made an offer, it got accepted, and now the cards are here.  Definitely some positive feedback for shipping.  

I am pretty excited.  

There are a few cards here that are duplicates, but there are also cards here that I have never even seen before the Ebay listing, like Chipper Jones.  

Here is a look at the set. 

The checklist has the 9 players included in this half of the set, but also a brief description about the player selection.  One thing that I really like about the Bulls to Braves set was that they included players who great while they were in Durham.  It would be really easy, especially with a long running Minor League team, to just throw together 10 players who were good in the Majors.  Love that we get cards of Dennis Burlingame and Melvin Nieves who made their mark with the Bulls for various reasons.   

Player cards.  

Good career with the Braves and Padres.  Ryan Klesko had cool sideburns and liked surfing.  

Avery was toast as a Major League player when this set was released.  The Braves had let him walk as a free agent where he ended up signed with the Red Sox.  If you talk to people who watched the Bulls in the 1980s and 1990s, he was apparently absolutely incredible in the Minors.  Scary that he was 18, fresh out of high school, and was that dominate right away.  How do you lose 4 games with an ERA of 1.45?  I know the answer, I am just saying. 

Burlingame is sort of a local legend with the Opening Day perfect game.  He was on the same team as Steve Avery, only his ERA was even lower at 0.50 in 11 starts.  He was a top 50 prospect as a teenager, but as the card says, his career was ruined by injuries.  

Turned out to be a pretty good player.  

Hit 300 home runs, and was not happy that the Oakland A's had a soda machine that changed players $1 for can of Coke.  

Maybe skip this one if you're a Padres fan.  

Melvin had a career year in 1992, which included time with the Bulls.  I have run into the occasional Padres fan who will use unkind words about Melvin, but I have met more Braves fans who are really grateful that he played so well in A Ball.  As the card states, Melvin was traded for Fred McGriff.  Melvin made it to the Majors, played a few years with the Padres, Tigers, and Reds.  

Another really good Major League player.  He killed my Cardinals during the 1996 NLCS.  They could not get him out.  He hit .542 with 7 extra base hits (2 home runs, 5 doubles) in 7 games.  

Second time this week I have posted a copy of this card.  Great Minor Leaguer, solid Major Leaguer.  

Good Minor Leaguer.  Decent outfielder for the Pirates during the 1990s.  Although, Harry Carey once compared an Al Martin home run against the Cubs to Babe Ruth hitting home runs.  There is even video.