Donruss put out a lot of ugly cards. There I said it. The designs were child-like, the pictures were mostly Spring Training head shots and the color palette was fugly. The redeeming qualities of Donruss stood out in the player selection and the player's full name on the back.At least Donruss had the close-up shot down pat. When the other card companies would show your player in action, Donruss had the head shot in the 80's. Sure, there was an occasional action shot here and there, but mostly it was head shots. That would change in the 90's to all action, all the time.
Ron Karkovice and Bobby Thigpen stand out as rookies for the Sox in this release. They may not have much book value, but both rookies became a top notch late inning battery for many years.
The White Sox have 25 cards in this set, including the Diamond King.
- 25 - Greg Walker (Diamond King)
- 59 - Greg Walker
- 87 - Ozzie Guillen
- 124 - Joel Davis
- 137 - Daryl Boston
- 162 - John Cangelosi
- 182 - Dave Schmidt
- 211 - Floyd Bannister
- 247 - Carlton Fisk
- 260 - Tim Hulett
- 285 - Jerry Hairston
- 306 - Russ Morman
- 334 - Ron Karkovice
- 370 - Bobby Thigpen
- 383 - Rich Dotson
- 409 - Steve Lyons
- 429 - Harold Baines
- 457 - Jose DeLeon
- 493 - Bob James
- 507 - Neil Allen
- 532 - Ron Hassey
- 552 - Joe Cowley
- 580 - Gene Nelson
- 617 - Steve Carlton
- 628 - Bill Dawley
This is a nice cross-section of baseball in this set. Mix in a few Hall of Famers, sprinkle in a few rookies, a few future coaches, a couple of fathers of second generation players, a future save master and a few players that would have better years elsewhere. You've got a pretty good mix that should've played a lot better than they did.
While Donruss may have annoying designs, their heart was in the right place. Nobody would topple Topps until the 90's. Until then, Topps was the standard. Donruss would have to fight for pecking order. Luckily for Donruss, Fleer had some truly awful designs themselves over the years.
3 comments:
When this set came out it was so much bigger than the one by Topps. I remember trying to complete it with wax packs. I have about three sets of Topps from that year, but only the one from Donruss. For some reason I remember it being so hard to complete. I still think about how hard it was to complete while doing other things of the same nature. Don't forget the puzzle pieces that you had to collect to make one large puzzle.
I remember being more impressed with the Topps and Fleer sets when this first came out.
Maybe it was because the Donruss set was hard to complete.
I loved that 87 Fleer set. The blue and white backgrounds just looked cool. None of my friends liked them, so for a few Donruss doubles of mine I could get a lot of Fleer. Man this site brings back some memories.
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