Showing posts with label Donruss Studio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donruss Studio. Show all posts

July 12, 2014

The World Needs a Retro Donruss Studio Set

Topps can conjure nostalgia for a wave of collectors just by opening a random file cabinet in its overstuffed HQ and producing a legacy design series like Archives or Heritage. And yet, the 13-year-old in me still thinks that nothing beats 1991's "sophisticated," "artistic," and high-cheese-quotient Studio. So tell us, Donruss: What's stopping you from jumping into the retro deep end with both feet?

Here's what I'm looking for:

1. Tasteful black and white photography of men with mullets. I understand that standard baseball hair fashion these days consists of goatees, mountain-man beards, and Mohawk variations, so you might want to stock a few mullet wigs with your photography equipment.

2. Hats optional. And actually, without a MLB license, I'd even accept a 225-card series of players in street clothes, or warmup shirts. Or even Ebbets Field Flannels jerseys of forgotten PCL teams.

3. Autographed buy-backs of Ramon Martinez, Steve Lake, Roger McDowell, Sammy Sosa, Jeff Bagwell, and Kevin Belcher. Really, it would need a 25-to-30-player autographed buy-back checklist featuring the most memorable photos from the original set.

4. Trivial personal interest filler on the backs. Who watches Orange Is The New Black? Or what about The Bachelorette? Or Adventure Time? Also, I'd like to know if more players today would list "Jesus Christ" as their personal hero than did in 1991 (11 players back then, including Alvin Davis, who listed his heroes as "Jesus Christ and Harold Reynolds").

5. No inserts. I realize that this last one is a tall order for a card company in the business of making money. So how about just a few parallels? Definitely needs a one-per-pack stamped, original buyback from the 1991 series. Then a six-per-box "Outtakes" parallel, which would be a photo variation. Finally, a much-harder-to-find "Negatives" parallel, which would show up once every few boxes, maybe like one or two per case.

Even without that pesky MLB license, this could be a nice, low-frills retro set that harks back to a simpler time when men wore a workingman's haircut, enjoyed shows like A Different World, Cheers, and Unsolved Mysteries, and collected porcelain figures of animals (well, maybe that was just you, Glenn Davis).

April 20, 2012

Cardboard Fenway: 1992 Donruss Studio Heritage Wade Boggs

Cardboard Fenway - #62. 1992 Donruss Studio Heritage Wade Boggs
The Red Sox and Yankees will be wearing throwback uniforms in today's game. The uniforms will be circa 1912, which pre-dates the uni Wade's donning here by six years.

March 12, 2012

The Heritagical Zipper

I've always liked the Heritage inserts from 1992 and 1993 Donruss Studio, but never really found any in my packs. Today I found five from the 1992 set in the quarter bin at my local shop, including this excellent card of Cal Ripken Jr. donning this "historical" zip-up Cooperstown Collection varsity jacket retailing at the O's team shop at Camden Yards for $139.95—uh, priceless original, probably game-used, yeah, game-used uniform of the St. Louis Browns.

Let's say you were in charge of one of the most compelling insert sets of the year, and you had two options: work the phones, pull some strings, and get real honest-to-goodness old, original uniforms for the superstars to don, or... see if the Sports Authority is open and go down there with your camera, the smokey backdrop you found whilst dumpster-diving behind the Sears, and a few guys in tow.


Hey Cal, just hide the tags on that zip-up replica jersey, we probably only got one shot at this before security comes.