Donruss Preferred were the cards that came in commemorative tins. It was all part of the late 1990s phase where card companies tried to one up each other through stupid packaging. The tins were better than the cards that came in the cans, Pinnalce Inside. Those had horrible packaging and mediocre cards. Donruss Preferred was at least a very nice product.
Here is a picture of a Donruss Preferred tin. It's not mine, just a picture I found on the internet.
Here is the 1997 Donruss Preferred Ray Lankford card.
This a card did not scan very well, so I am going to put up a second picture.
Such a great looking card with the gold foil card. Not sure this needs a lot of explanation, just a great looking card. The name plate, team names, and brand name are all small with the player picture taking center stage inside the gold frame. Why can't we have cards like this now?
Back of the card.
Simple stat line and the color photo are nice. The small write-up is quality, nut the biographical information on the right-hand side seems a little out of place. It's a small thing though. This is a really nice card.
I know that there have already been several blog posts in 2019 about different set projects that I am working on at that moment. It feels like the number is higher than two, but I am going to post a third one today. It's not only a post about a set project, but it is a brand new set project. Fresh off the presses.
At some point in December, I sat down and wrote different ideas for set projects I could work this year. It was a good list and there were several good ideas in a notepad on the desk in my office. Unfortunately, my two year old daughter colored over all of the pages in purple crayon and ripped out the other pages. It was a good list, I remember most of it. The first set on the list was the 1998 Donruss Preferred Title Waves set.
The cards look like this:
It's a die cut insert set. I have tried to track down on the ratio for these cards, but I do not think that they were very difficult to come across based on the availability of the cards, the price, and the fact that there 30 cards in the set with almost 2000 copies of each card. That's 60,000 cards.
I best remember this set as the cards that came in tins. I think I used to have some hanging around the house, but I am fairly certain they fell victim to a Goodwill run. Not my picture, but the packaging tins looked like this.....
Thanks Ebay for the picture. Each tin had a different player on them. There were different sized and different colored tins, but that's not why I am here.
There are thirty cards in the set with each card featuring some sort of accomplishment connected to an award or accomplishment of the player on the card. The card is then serial numbered to the year that the event, or accomplishment took place. The card at the top celebrates Andres Galarraga winning the 1996 National League Home Run title, so the card has 1996 copies.
I have a good chunk of the set, but there is really no rhyme or reason to what I own. I feel like these are cards that I have found in cheapie bins at card shows and the whatnot. I found a copy of the Manny Ramirez card in a top loader with a $0.50 orange sticker attached.
The card actually looks like it has been sitting in the sun or something. Might have to replace this card. Checklist with the cards I have highlighted red.
1 Nomar Garciaparra 1997
2 Scott Rolen 1997
3 Roger Clemens 1997
4 Gary Sheffield 1997
5 Jeff Bagwell 1997
6 Cal Ripken, Jr. 1997
7 Frank Thomas 1997
8 Ken Griffey, Jr. 1997
9 Larry Walker 1997
10 Derek Jeter 1996
11 Juan Gonzalez 1996
12 Bernie Williams 1996
13 Andruw Jones 1996
14 Andy Pettitte 1996
15 Ivan Rodriguez 1996
16 Alex Rodriguez 1996
17 Mark McGwire 1996
18 Andres Galarraga 1996
19 Hideo Nomo 1995
20 Mo Vaughn 1995
21 Randy Johnson 1995
22 Chipper Jones 1995
23 Greg Maddux 1995
24 Manny Ramirez 1995
25 Tony Gwynn 1995
26 Albert Belle 1995
27 Kenny Lofton 1995
28 Mike Piazza 1993
29 Paul Molitor 1993
30 Barry Bonds 1993
In all, I have 19 of the 30 cards, which puts me just north of 60% of the set being completed. I think the biggest challenge in completing this set will be the fact that I need to find a lot of the "big name" players from the late 1990s. It's going to take some patience to find most of the remaining cards, maybe not Mo Vaughn, at a good price.
For example, there are several copies of the Griffey card floating around on Ebay, almost all of them are around $20 or higher.
and if I just wanted to finish off the set and cross it off the list, I could go buy one of these cards this afternoon. It would probably be at my house by the weekend. Same with the other cards I am missing on the checklist. However, I feel like I am likely going to go the auction route on several of these cards.....
An auctioned copy of the Griffey card. No, I did not win this one. I did not even bid, but a difference of $18 is worth a little time to complete this project. Add in that I am still putting the finishing touches on my Topps Glossy Mail-Ins, and I am going to give myself until April to finish this project off.
I have very specific places that I try to find my baseball cards. New releases, autographs that are $5 or more, higher end singles are usually off of Ebay. Almost all of my lower end cards come off COMC. I usually add cards to my cart for a few weeks, usually as I am sorting out cards, and check out every couple of weeks. COMC has flat rate shipping, which keeps cards that cost fifty cents really close to that price after shipping is factor into the overall cost. Ebay, not so much.
I find some really great looking cards on there, brings back a lot of good memories from long ago. The brands and sets are fun to look at, as well as the different players.
I made a post on the last day of 2017 about what I wanted to accomplish this year in terms of my collection and the different posts that I make in this space. My goals were simple. I had four of them, so let's run through them really fast, and then get to some baseball cards.
I wanted to assemble fewer current year sets. I have done really well with this goal. So far, I have put together a Topps Series 1 base set and a Topps Heritage set. There was also the 1983 inserts from the Topps base set, but I considered that a set project. I am not sure how many sets have been put out between Topps and Panini, but I have missed a lot of them. Verdict: Thumbs up
More single cards. Just scrolling through my past months posts, I would say that this has also been fairly successful. Some of my 1990s Cardinals posts are more player focused posts, but my last few posts, minus those Cardinals posts, include a single card of an NC State player, a single card of a Durham Bulls player, an Evan Longoria relic card, a Madison Bumgarner autograph, and a pair of posts about some new Rays prospects/players who have appeared for the Durham Bulls this year. Verdict: Thumbs up
More projects. I have posted one, granted I completed that one project, but I can still do better here. I have wondered if this isn't a great topic to write about as this year has gone on. At different points I have averaged a post per day in this space. In recent year, I have been posting two to three times a week. Roughly a dozen posts per month. Makes it hard to squeeze in the other posts about single cards. I feel like those posts take longer to write, so they get squeezed in the whole time management thing. You know, wife, kids, and work all come before writing about baseball cards under the guise of a giant wooden bull landmark in a nearby baseball stadium. Verdict: Thumbs down
More Durham Bulls and Cardinals posts: I have done well with making my 1990s Cardinals posts and Project Durham Bulls posts. Throw in plenty of other posts about other Cardinals cards that I have traded, or bought, same with the Bulls. Verdict: Thumbs up
Which brings me to this post. I feel like this post fits with several of these goals: more single cards, along with more Cardinals cards. I would love to turn some of those single cards posts and Cardinals posts into some time for older sets and players. I know the 1990s Cardinals posts cover that to some extent, but those 1990s cards are some of my favorite sets in my collection.
Enough talk. Let's look at some cards.
My first card is from the 1998 Donruss Preferred set. I don't have this entire set, not really close, but I have plenty of single base and insert cards. This is from the Great X-Pectations insert set, which paired veteran players and young players based on their position, or some sort of similar playing attribute. The front of this card features Rangers Hall of Famer Ivan Rodriguez. The back has a younger Cardinals player.....
catcher Eli Marrero. I generally really liked this set, I just always wished that there had been a little cleaner look to the back of the card than what is actually there. The placement of the brand logo, MLB logo, and Players Association logo, along with the Copyright information give it that back of the card feel. The brand logo is repetitive from the front of the card, and I think the could have used space towards the bottom of the card for the copyright, MLB logo, and Players Association logo. The younger player side would have had a smaller scale picture and design, but I think it would have been a cleaner look.
Serial number has to go somewhere. If you didn't collect cards in the 1990s, don't laugh at the print run of 3,000, that was a serious number back in those days.
Next card is also a Marrero.
This is from the Leaf Rookie & Stars set, also a 1998 product. I never put this set together solely based on the ridiculous price of the Troy Glaus rookie. Nice player, even was a Cardinal for a few years, but not worth whatever his card in this set sells for, or sold for when it was released.
Next, also an Eli Marrero.
or as Topps listed him on their cards Elieser Marrero. All of these Marrero cards are prospect cards, yet he turned into a utility player. He really was a good prospect and ranked as a top 100 prospect at the time he reached the Majors at the end of the 1997 season. Two different events really wrecked his career. First, he missed most of a season towards the beginning of his career with thyroid cancer. The Cardinals ended up signing Mike Matheny, who then became the full time catcher.
Marrero did return and was used as a utility player by Tony LaRussa. He was actually he useful part and good player in that role, but he tore up his knee in a game at Wrigley Field in 2002. The game probably should not have been played, as the weather conditions were horrendous and both teams were upset about playing. Marrero played a few more years after the knee injury, had one good year with the Braves, but the rest of his career saw him limited to 50 games, or less per season, and he did not hit above .220.
Next.
Not a rookie card, but this is early, or late depending on how you are looking at it, in the career of Alan Benes. He was better than Andy, at least prior to his shoulder injuries, he just did not play a very long time.
Last one for today.
Not a Cardinals card, but a card of a long time Cardinals player who also happens to be from the St. Louis area. Bernard Gilkey was part of the wave of young players who replaced the 1980s Whiteyball Cardinals along with Ray Lankford, Todd Zeile, Felix Jose, and others. Gilkey had some good years with the Cardinals, but was traded to the Mets in January of 1996 after the team signed Ron Gant.
Gilkey's best season was 1996 with the Mets.
He hit more than 30 home runs, drove in more than 100 runs, hit over .300, and had an on base percentage near .400. He also landed a role in Men in Black missing a fly ball in Shea Stadium when he sees a UFO flying over New York. Unfortunately Bernard had some problems with substance abuse, a bunch of DUIs, his stats dropped off, and he found his way out baseball.
This is a nice card from one of my favorite sets, Flair Showcase, which was around for a fairly long time. I think I might actually have something close to a complete set of these cards. Even so, I know that I do not have this Row 0 card, which is serial numbered out of 2000.
The Donruss Preferred set was a high end product that ran during 1998, 1997 too, that reminded me a lot of the Fleer Showcase, or Topps Finest, products of the same era. High end, glossy cards with several different "tiers" of players that collectors could put together to make a set. Some of the high end sets from that era focused primarily on the base set and left collectors a little short on the inserts. However, a few products offered quality beyond the base set, but sometimes at long odds.
1998 Donruss Preferred Title Waves Albert Belle
Odds were never given on the Title Waves cards when the cards were released because the cards are all serial numbered to different amounts. In the case of my Albert Belle, the card is numbered to 1995 since the card recognizes his American League Home Run title in 1995. While the exact odds of pulling a Title Waves card was never released, the cards can be in pretty high demand at times depending on the player. I picked this card up last week in a small trade and have considered adding this insert set as my second set I am trying to complete for the year. I am currently working on the 1998 Topps Tek set too. This Albert Belle gives me a total of 23 out of the 30 cards in this set which would leave me with seven to find. However, after checking a few secondary sites I can only find one of the cards I need to complete the set and it is probably a little bit more than I wish to spend. I will sleep on it for a few days and consider putting this up to finish. In the meantime, I am happy to give this sweet Albert Belle card a new home.
