Yeah, I know. It's been a while since I've done one of these. I think I shall do these more often.

My thoughts on 2014 Donruss Series 2 ...

1) The base set violates The First Commandment of Baseball Card Product Development.

(In case your wondering, Our Lord and Savior, Jefferson Burdick, was given these Commandments by God Himself one day while he was out on a stroll on the banks of Lake Onondonga.  It's in The Bible, trust me.)

The First Commandment of Baseball Card Product Development: Thou shalt not short-print thy base cards in a Flagship product.

Between the 30 Diamond Kings (of which there were already 30 in Series One), and 25 Rated Rookies, over a third of the base set is SPed.  And we're not talking one-per-pack SPs either.  You only get ten in a 24-pack Hobby box. Which brings us to point #2

2) The base set is way too small for a product like this.

155 cards (100 if you subtract the SPs) for a flagship product.  I mean, really?   Why even bother with it then?

MEMO to Panini: If you want collectors to keep ripping packs, don't gimmick-up the base set.  MAKE THE BASE SET BIGGER!

3) Haven't we seen these guys before?

As I document in the video, many of the same players who had base cards in Series One, also have base cards in Series 2 -- which kind of defeats the whole purpose of a second series, doesn't it?

Look, I see where Panini's thoughts were.  Series One was such a hit with collectors, it made sense for them to release a second series -- even though they had no plans for S2 originally.  And since there are only so many players who switched teams in the interim, and only so many rookies that got called up, they couldn't just fill out the rest of base set with a bunch of Ham & Eggers.

Hopefully for 2015, Panini will plan out their checklist better and avoid a repeat of this year's repeats.

4) Donruss Elite needs to come back as a standalone product.

In lieu of releasing it as its own distinct product, each pack of S2 has one card from a 100-card Donruss Elite set.  These foil-fronted cards are, hands-down, the highlight of Series 2 and it makes you wonder why Panini didn't release Elite on its own.  Maybe for 2015 we'll get a proper Donruss Elite Baseball.

Speaking of Elite ...

5) Did we really need four different "Elite" inserts?

In addition to the one-per-pack "Elites," there's also "Elite Dominators" and "The Elite Series" ( continuations of the Series One inserts), and "Elite Series."  I get that The Elite Series is the "Donruss" insert and Elite Series is the "Elite" insert, but come on!  They couldn't think of anything different?  And it's not as if there aren't any Donruss Elite inserts from the past collectors wouldn't want to see back again (Title Waves, Primary Colors, Passing the Torch, Back to the Future, et al), am I right?

6) Tracy Hackler is The Man, and you know it.

For one week, I want to be Tracy Hackler.

Or two.

Or ten.

Or 1000.

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Don't get me wrong, I like this product.  It's not the "flagship" product I would have preferred -- it's more "Donruss Archives."  But for all it's faults, 2014 Donruss Baseball is still better then anything Topps has made this year.

RATING: 3 Gumsticks (out of 5).

Call me old fashioned, but when I evaluate the pros and cons of a product, and whether or not I want to spend any hard currency in acquiring it, the number of BIG MOJO HITZ!!!1! in a box is (usually) ninth or tenth on my priorities list. In most cases, my criteria involves (in descending order): Card design; collectability; size of the base set; and the number and design of the inserts. (BTW, That second point, the ability of a product to be reasonably collected, is why I've stopped collecting the current monopoly licensee's baseball insert-bloated and gimcrack-laden products.) I purchased this Hobby box of 2012 Upper Deck MLS Soccer from Dave & Adam's NSCC table for $50 and am only now, a week-and-a-half later, getting around to ripping it. In terms of my criteria, it's a well designed product that's both collectible and collectable. The base set is a bit small at 200 cards and other than the hits, there are no other inserts in the set. This is both GOOD (no parallels!) and BAD (nothing else to chase after). Yes, this box DOES come with four jersey cards and an autograph in every box. But, like I said, I didn't buy it for the hits. With that said, that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a decent hit now and then, right?
So yeah, I only pulled one of the top five cards in my life out of this box. No big deal.

Yeah, yeah. I know, I know.  It's been a while since I've done one of these things.  Sue me.

Anyway, I picked up a box of 2003 Donruss Elite at the NSCC for $55.  Here's what I got.

SPOILER ALERT: This would have been an awesome box, had I ripped it in 2003.  In 2013, not so much.



Well, yeah.  That box sucked.  But for $55, this was exponentially better that the two Hobby boxes of 2012 Topps Series One I could have bought for the same money.

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20 packs per box, five cards per pack.

Base Set: 96 of 200 short set: 95 of 180 Gimmicked Rookies (serial-numbered to 1750): 1 of 20 (J. Gobble) 1 Gold Status (serial-numbered to 24): V. Guerrero. 2 All-Time Career Best (1:9): D. Murphy, R. Clemens 1 Career Bests (varies): V. Guerrero (/417) 1 Career Bests Materials (serial-numbered to 500): A-Fraud 1 Throwback Threads (serial-numbered to 250): A-Fraud

Because FUN IS GOOD!!!

It's two, two, two rip-offs in one video.

But do they have an EPIC Frank Zappa soundtrack?

Didn't think so.

#2: One box of 1998 Zenith.

Paid $27.

Do you really want to know why I get angry at gimmicks? It's all because of Pinnacle Brands. Pinnacle may have been the first instance of a corporation gimmicking itself into bankruptcy.

The spectacular rise and devastating crash of Pinnacle Brands should be a case study on how not to run a trading card company; but first, let's go back a few years. In 1992, there were five MLB licensees, and of those five, what was then known as "Score/Sportflics" was clearly the trailer. Score was the last company to introduce a "premium" card set and when 1992 Pinnacle was finally released, Topps' Stadium Club and Fleer's Ultra had already upped the ante. Score's flagship set was hindered by drab design, boring color schemes, rampant overproduction, and a lack of inserts. If you were a betting man in 1992 and had to lay odds on which of the five MLB-Licensed trading card companies would be the first to go, Score would have been the Morning Line favorite.

Things began to change in late-1993 when Jerry Meyer was hired as CEO of the newly re-named "Pinnacle Brands." Within a few years, mainly by catering to what collectors actually wanted, Pinnacle had gone from being The Hobby's "sick man," to (according to a survey released by Action Packed) company with the largest percentage of market share.

By 1996 Pinnacle was exactly that; the pinnacle of The Hobby. Then a series of bad decisions followed by even more bad decisions, led to one of the most spectacular falls in Hobby history. It all started with Pinnacle's ill-conceived acquisitions of Action Packed and Donruss. In '97 Pinnacle released an Action Packed football and an Action Packed NASCAR set, but no baseball and nothing else afterward '97.

What was most puzzling was what they did with Donruss. The company's European owners had been wanting to get out of the American market; and so in 1996 they sold the candy division to Hershey and Donruss to Pinnacle. Even though Donruss had been acquired by Pinnacle, for some reason, they continued to operate it as a separate company. Although Pinnacle did move Donruss to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, it still had its own separate staff, its own office space, and its own distribution channels. It even had, if you could believe this, paid for its own licenses.

Donruss could have released all their 1997-98 baseball card sets under Pinnacle Brand's license. But they spent to money on a separate license anyway.

For the next two years, Pinnacle and Donruss's business model relied largely on 1) Overproduction and 2) Gimmicks. To be fair, they did leave their flagship brands (Score, Pinnacle and Donruss) largely sacrosanct. Yes, they did such things as the 1998 Score All-Star Edition (a re-release of 1998 Score Baseball, only with different inserts), and 1997 New Pinnacle (a completely different Pinnacle set released in lieu of a second series of 1997 Pinnacle Baseball). But Donruss, Pinnacle, and Score remained largely unchanged.

But in order to raise the revenue needed to level their post-acquisition balance sheet, Pinnacle (but not necessarily Donruss) let the presses fly with one new brand after another; a slew of 200-250 card base set all retailing for $2-$3/pack, all virtually indistinguishable from one another. 1997 New Pinnacle; 1997 Pinnacle X-Press; 1997 and '98 Pinnacle Inside; 1998 Pinnacle Performers; 1998 Pinnacle Plus: If I were to show you a base card from any one of the aforementioned sets, would any of you be able to properly identify it?

But it wasn't just the avalanche of new brands, it was the constant re-tooling of existing ones. There was no consistency from year to year. Take for example Zenith. It was introduced in 1995 as the company's first true "super-premium" product, designed to compete with Fleer's Flair, Upper Deck's SP, and Donruss's Leaf Limited in the $5/pack category. (Pinnacle also introduced that year the Chromium-stocked Select Certified as their answer to Topps Finest.) For the first two years, you basically knew what you were going to get in a box of Zenith: A high-quality base set with a couple of way-cool Dufex inserts in a Hobby box.

Then in 1997 they completely changed the product, doubling the price to $10/pack, reducing the base set to only 50 cards, and inserting two, oversize, 8" X 10" cards per pack.

Yeah, oversized cards and $10 packs in 1997. What the fuck were they thinking?

And then there were the gimmicks. I guess if you're part of the product development team and management mandates that you crank out yet another set, I guess you have to do something to make it stand out. Hence, the cards in soup cans and tins and bizarrely structured sets like Fractal Matrix; so confusing that even I, a man with a graduate degree in economics (which requires a lot of advanced mathematics to acquire) still can not figure out.

Which brings us to 1998 Zenith, a Perfect Storm of the needless meddling of an established card set combined with just about the dumbest gimmick I've ever seen. Yes, I'm talking about Dare to Tear.

I picked up a box of this junk for $27 at The National -- which is about $26.99 more than I probably should have paid -- and video broke it. In the process, I will attempt to extract the standard-sized card from the jumbo WITHOUT trying to damage either card.

Part One:



Part Two:



Part Three:





#10: It's for "Members Only"
#9: The case of the mysterious rookie reprints
#8: 75 for 25
#7: A point is a point
#6: OH NOEZ!!!!!
#5: What do they know about partying? Or anything else?
#4: Epix Mo-Jo!!!
#3: Satisfyin' the ladies, one printin' plate at a time
#2: The Mother of all junk waxboxes
#1: Ironic ain't just the name of an Alanis Morrisette song

#5 TRADE: A bunch of Toronto Blue Jays cards "to be named later," to David of Long Fly Ball to Because.. for a six-pack of Flying Monkey Hoptical Illusion beer.



Yeah, I made a trade at The National for beer. And not just any beer, an imported micro-brew.

Now I promised David that I would put his six-pack to "good use." So I bought a box of 1995 Bazooka baseball for $8 at the show and decided to make a video box break out of it.

Part One:


Part Two:


#10: It's for "Members Only"
#9: The case of the mysterious rookie reprints
#8: 75 for 25
#7: A point is a point
#6: OH NOEZ!!!!!
#5: What do they know about partying? Or anything else?
#4: Epix Mo-Jo!!!
#3: Satisfyin' the ladies, one printin' plate at a time
#2: The Mother of all junk waxboxes
#1: Ironic ain't just the name of an Alanis Morrisette song

I'm still kicking myself for not changing the batteries in my camera.

"Hello. My name is Chris H. and I'm addicted to ripping shitty wax."

I paid $104.90 for five Bowman Blasters and all I got was....

Part One



Part Two

Marie from A Cardboard Problem told me about the el-cheapo Blasters K-Mart just got in. I got three 2007 Turkey Red Blasters this afternoon and busted them live on UStream.

What the hell, it was only 100 miles away.

In honor of Topps' 60th Anniversary, I went to where it all began...