Set Appreciation Post #12 - 1988 Donruss

It has been a week.  I am doing a whole lot of nothing this weekend and it feels great.  Writing a blog post about the 1988 Donruss set seemed like a really huge time waster, so here I am.  Maybe I just hang out with the wrong people and follow the wrong accounts on social media, but the 1988 Donruss set seems wildly unpopular.  Is it just me, or does it often get lumped in with sets like 1991 Fleer?  

I am going to hold my opinion to the end of the post, but I will probably give away it's ranking somewhere around the top of the post.  

Special guest appearance by Aaron Boone via screen shots.  I learned this week that I attended his Major League debut.  He was ejected after being tagged out at home on a throw from right-fielder Brian Jordan.  

 

Actual screen shot of Aaron Boone after getting run from the game.  Deion Sanders homered off of Matt Morris.  The Reds won.  The Cardinals fans booed Deion Sanders and none of them could tell you why they booed him. 

Let's go.  

BASE CARD

 

Many of the cards in the post were actually opened by the 10 and 11 year old me.  Pack fresh.  You're going to find this hard to believe, but I have never gone back and worked on improving my 1988 Donruss set.  The first base card in the set is Mackey Sasser.  Actually, the first two dozen cards in Donruss sets were always the Diamond Kings cards.  I will get to those in a few minutes.  

The Rated Rookie cards were always great.  That little logo in the corner of the card is always a bonus in my book.  One of the great things that came out of 1980s baseball cards. 

Shall we talk about the border design? 

 

I never quite understood what was going on with the blue, red, and black lines.  I have looked at these cards from time to time over the last 33 years and I have no idea how this design was picked for a large baseball card set.  If this was the best design option at the time, what did it beat out?  

The back of the card. 

 There were always pros and cons to the card backs in the Donruss set.  The con was when you got a card of some player who had been around forever, but they only put five years worth of stats on the back of the card.  I like the highlight section better than Topps and I also like that they put down how the player was acquired.  You could find some really bad trades on the back of these cards. 

Diamond Kings 

I wanted to pick a Cardinals card for this spot, but the 1988 Donruss set had Jack Clark with a pink background.  I like the pink background, but 1988 was not a great year to be a Cardinals fan and see Jack Clark in a pack of cards. 

Why?  

I am going to slip in a screen shot of Mike Bush from NewsChannel 5. I think Mike is a news anchor now, or somebody serious.  Hopefully Zip Rzeppa is still doing sports in St. Louis. 

It also started the Bob Horner era in St. Louis.  

I decided to pick this Mark McGwire card instead.  Big Mac was coming off setting the Major League rookie home run record.  If you didn't know the year of the card, you can tell it's early in his career, because he looks to be a normal size in the picture.  I like the colored bars in the background too, very 1980s.  

Aaron Boone screen shot. 

There are probably better Diamond Kings cards in this set, but I am sticking with McGwire.  Solid design and he actually had a really good 1987.  

Cool Card of 1988 

I never got the whole idea of spending a ton of money on players with very little Major League experience.  Yes, it's been really bad the past two decades with Bowman, but it's not like that was the start of the trend.  Bowman just made it worse.  The 1988 Donruss set had one of those "hot" rookie cards way back in 1988.  

The 1988 Donruss Gregg Jefferies card was a really big deal back in the late 1980s.  People were pretty sure that he was going to be the next great hitter in the Majors, win a few batting titles, and be in the Hall of Very Good or the Hall of Fame.  

A lot of people spent a lot of money on this card. 

 

Other people just pulled the card from a $0.35 pack of cards from Ben Franklin.  

While we are here.  It really bothers me when people label Gregg Jefferies as a "flop" or a "bust".  He was a really good player who just happened not to live up to very lofty expectations.  I saw him play for the Cardinals for two years in the 1990s, excellent player.  Great hitter. 

Best Non-Cardinal Card 

I am a sucker for flip-down sunglasses.  

Why don't players wear these types of sunglasses anymore?  

I don't wear glasses.

I don't wear sunglasses.  

If I did wear glasses, they would be flip downs.  

Thank you, Aaron Boone.  Yes, Eric Davis is also a really good hitter.  

Best Cardinals Card 

 

Wrigley makes a good backdrop for baseball cards.  The Ozzie Smith card is a Spring Training picture.  The Vince Coleman card was also taken in Wrigley, but he is bunting.  Easy choice here. 

 Thanks, Aaron. 

Best Durham Bulls Card 

Let's wrap up this post.  I thought about going Brad Komminsk on the Brewers, but I am going to fly under the radar a bit here and go with Milt Thompson.  Really, there were not that many great choices.  The Bulls produced a lot of Braves players during the 1980s, but none of them have great cards in this set. 

 

Milt Thompson, if you did not watch baseball in the 1980s or 1990s.  Good player for the Braves, Phillies, Cardinals, and back to the Phillies for a second time.  I think there might have been a few years with the Astros at the very end of his career.  Good hitter, good defender.  I like the portrait style photo, just wish the photographer had backed up a little bit.  Milt had a really unique batting stance, but I cannot find a good picture of it.  His bat is actually too high in this photo.  Normally it was behind his back shoulder, he stood deep in the box, but stuck his front leg out straight in front of him. 

 Yes.  

How Does It Compare?  

You're probably thinking that this set is going to end up being in the last spot, but that's not going to happen.  I have no problem putting the 1988 Donruss set ahead of the bottom 3 sets.  It's not better than the 2017 Topps Heritage Minors set, so I am really trying to decide whether to put it above or below the Emotion XL set.  

The major flaw with 1988 is its design.  If Aaron Boone had been a design manager at Donruss during the late 1980s, this might be a conversation he had with his team.

Aaron Boone was in high school in 1988. 

Emotion XL has a good design, but some of it's cards are really dumb.  Let's remember that Dante Bichette's "emotion" was "The Heat".  Still think that the Emotion cards are better overall set than Donruss, especially when the quality of the cards is taken into consideration. 

I am going to go ahead and put the 1988 Donruss set in 9th place in my Set Appreciation rankings. 

11. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

10. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

9. 2000 UD Ionix  

9. 1988 Donruss 

8. 1995 Emotion XL 

7. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

6. 1998 Topps TEK 

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3. 1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

Sorry, I am out of Aaron Boone screenshots. 

Wandering.

Last week the Rays sent Wander Franco to their Minor League camp, meaning he is likely going to spend a big chunk of his summer playing for the Durham Bulls.  How many times have the Durham Bulls had the top prospect entering a season?  

It's been a few.  

I am really excited to see him play, which would normally mean that I would be searching Ebay and Facebook groups for a few of his cards.  How many have I bought this spring?  

Well, there is this one....

 

That's it.  

I felt well prepared knowing that there is a healthy market for Wander Franco cards, but have you seen the price of his cards?  His autographs are all around/over $100.  Some of base cards and serial numbered cards are kind of pricy for a player with less than 200 games in the Minors. So, after looking at my baseball card budget and weighing whether or not to spend some money on the upcoming Durham Bulls players, I have decided that I am going to skip the entire team over at the moment.  

That's right.  A blog with a heavy slant on collecting Durham Bulls cards is not collecting Durham Bulls cards for the moment.  I am sure that I will find a few players on the team later on this summer.  Surely, someone will be more in the Michael Brosseau price range at some point.  In the meantime, I decided to redirect my Durham Bulls budget for this spring into a single card.  

I know it's a bold move, but I stand by the decision.  

I have a copy of this card, but this one is nicer than the one in my collection and it's Stan Musial.  Do you really need a reason to buy a Stan Musial card?  I cannot think of one, especially considering this autographed card is cheaper than a Wander Franco autograph.  

Exactly Zero Packs.

Whatever day Topps released their Series 1 cards, I ran by Target before work at 7 A.M. when the store opened.  There were no baseball cards.  I went back later in the afternoon.  There were a few display boxes, but the cards were all gone.  I have been to Target since, but I have spent zero minutes looking for baseball cards while I was in the store.  

I am feeling completely done with packs.  

I opened my first pack of cards in 1983 when I was in 1st Grade.  I have been collecting for 38 years and feel like I have better things to do in life than to chase down packs of cards at retail stores. A wife, two kids, a Betta fish, and a teaching job for starters. While we are here, I am definitely not buying any from the people who are cleaning out Target and Wally World, marking the packs of cards, and reselling them online.  

I am going to buy zero packs of cards this year.  

There are still some nice looking 2021 Topps cards that are worth owning, so during the three weeks since my last blog post I managed to track down a few.  All the players have some sort of connection to the Cardinals or Durham Bulls.  

Non-autographs are up first.  

I like that there are still Blake Snell cards in a Rays uniform.  He does not have any autographs in Series 1, but he has plenty of other cards in there.  Probably work on adding those in the coming weeks.  Not sure how I will feel about his Padres cards.  I will cross that bridge when they start rolling out.  

Next up is Dylan Carlson.  I am still not sure how good of a player he is going to be, but he's at least going to be a starter for the Cardinals this season.  People were crazy about his cards while he was in the Minors.  Settled down a bit last year, but seems like they are picking up in popularity again.  

Patino seems like a good bet for the Durham Bulls this year.  He was part of the Blake Snell trade with the Padres.  Maybe he will start in the Majors, but that would be surprising given the Rays can probably save money in the long run by keeping him in the Minors for a short time.  

I like his signature too, which brings me to my final card.  

Why isn't this a Cardinals card?  

I still like it.  

Until next time.