Random Ray - 1998 Donruss Collections Donruss

In the late 1990s, many large hobby companies were really big into repeatedly reprinting cards with minor aesthetic changes and hyping the rehashed cards up as some great new product. This phenomenon still exists within the world of baseball cards today. If I had been blogging about cards in the late 1990s, this topic would have received a lot of attention.  I guess it still could, but I have just given up on complaining about redundant and repetitive baseball cards anymore.  

Perhaps, I will take back up the cause.  

Here is an example of the redundant world of late 1990s baseball cards, if you were not collecting at the time.  Three Ray Lankford cards.  They look the same, but they are not the same.  

Yes, I made the pictures really small.  You are not missing much, because they are the same damn card over and over again.  On the left, we have Topps Chrome.  It's a photo of Ray Lankford hitting, which looks similar to the regular Topps card in the middle.  What is different?  The "Chromium" finish*. The card on the right is the Topps Opening Day, which also features the same picture of Ray Lankford hitting.  The Opening Day card does have a silver frame, rather than gold, and Topps made a cool little logo for the bottom left corner of the card.

*Patent pending for the last 20 years.  

Have you ever seen the movie Zoolander?  

At the end Will Ferrell's character, mean fashion designer, questions the talents of Ben Stiller's character, a really good-looking male model, because he only has one look he can use while he is modeling. The scene has been turned into a meme that could be easily manipulated to describe late 1990s baseball cards.  

I am going to put that on my list of things to do.  

What does this have to do with this week's Random Ray post?  

Here is the card from the 1998 Donruss Collections Donruss set.  

If you did not collect cards at this time and are thinking, "Is that a fancy way for saying this card is in the Donruss set?", the answer is complicated and involves redundancy at its finest. 

Yes, in 1998 there was a Ray Lankford card in the Donruss set.  It looked like this.....

Pinnacle also produced the Leaf, Donruss Elite, and Donruss Preferred baseball card sets. Obviously, everyone loved them, which is why the company decided to produce all the cards from all four sets over again, but they threw some foil finishes on top of the cards and merged them all into one set.

The Donruss Collections set was born. A grand total of 750 cards that were all reprinted from another set from the same year. Even better, you had to put the set together by purchasing packs with 5 cards. The quick math tells me that's 150 packs of cards assuming you do not get any duplicates.  

The scan above really did not do the shiny surface justice. Here is another look at the front.  

Did I mention that Pinnacle went bankrupt after releasing this product?

Back of the card.  

We get another photograph of Lankford, a decent little write-up about him setting a personal-best in home runs, and then the standard Donruss stat line from this era. The Cardinals logo in the background makes the back seem a little busy. 

Also note that there is a "Donruss Collections" logo and the number 13 underneath the stat box. This is the card number for the Donruss Collections set.  The 13 from the top of the card is from the original Donruss set. It just so happened that when Pinnacle merged the four sets into one set, the Donruss cards all kept their original card number.  

That "Four Sets In One" thing is borrowed from an Ebay seller.  

$109 for this box?  

It's got Travis Lee on the front. 

Obviously the "4 SETS IN ONE!" selling point got one person to bid on this item. If you bought this and you are reading my blog post, please email me.  I have cards to sell you.  

I really want to like this Ray Lankford card, so I take it out and look at it's shiny surface and ignore the fact that it is from a horribly conceived product that had a picture of Travis Lee on the box.