The 1991 series 1 cards featured BRIGHT blue borders with various diagonal lines and 'painted' dots or mark, kind of resembling tire tread. The pictures were nice and big, taking up about two-thirds the face of the card. The company logo was in an upper corner, the team logo in a lower corner of the image. At the bottom in a red diagonal banner was the player name and below that in a baby blue banner was the player's position. The backs of the cards were a similar baby blue with black text. A wonderful color combination for those who don't actually want to READ what's on the back!
In today's pack, we have a pretty good mix of stars, HOF, and people long forgotten...
The first card in the pack is Robin Yount (White Sox)! That is awesome! Then we have Al Newman (Twins), Walt Weiss (A's), Greg Hibbard (White Sox - Man, this would have been a great Sox-or-no-Sox pack!), Charlie Hayes (Phillies), Greg Olson (Braves), Jose Offerman (Dodgers - Rated Rookie), Dave Martinez (Expos), Tony -Frickin- Gwynn (Padres), Delino DeShields (Expos - Diamond King), Tim Crews (Dodgers), Scott Bankhead (Mariners), Billy Hatcher (Reds), Dickie Thon (Phillies), Terry Bross (Mets - Rated Rookie), Willie Stargell puzzle piece with wax pack stuck to it (#1,2,3).
Did you know that the MLB contract with Donruss REQUIRED they produce a "Diamond King" for every team or they couldn't produce ANY Diamond King cards!? That's why you see some crappy Diamond Kings in the early days of the subset. I'm not saying DeShields is a crappy DK, just giving a little bit of useless trivial knowledge...
oh my god, i remember these cards. these are some of the first cards i ever collected. Didn't they have green for one year too? Thanks for the nostalgia.
ReplyDeleteWith winter coming soon and the price of oil sky-rocketing, I have decided to burn my collection of about 5 sucktillion 1991 Donruss in my wood stove to stay warm this winter!
ReplyDeleteOK, I'll say it then: Deshields is a crappy DK. And 1991 Donruss - that's beyond crap. No likey.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a Robin Ventura, not Yount. To be fair, I had to look up Robin Yount's stats to make sure he didn't play a year for the White Sox.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I bet Thorzul is embarassed by my lack of Brewers knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThis set will always stand out for me as the height of overproduction. However, my first box of cards was a $5.00 Series II from Value City.
ReplyDeleteYount did play for the White Socks (sic) in an alternate universe. He specifically requested to play first base, prompting the Socks to send a young Frank Thomas to Milwaukee. In this alternate universe, the Brewers won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, displacing the Toronto Blue Jays as champions.
ReplyDeleteHeh-heh, whoops! I must have had Yount on the brain from the Scratch-off tourney, or from one too many libations, whichever...
ReplyDeleteLOL. I caught the Yount thing right off the bat as well, but sadly, it is because I recognized the photo in the card as Ventura rather than seeing his name. I have probably seen the cards in this set 60,000 times over, as it was near the beginning of my card collecting days as a kid. We all know what happened to those cards, too. They got sorted, and handled, and rearranged, into pages, then out of pages, etc. I think you follow me on this one. I would sit just sorting them everyday after school and for the whole weekend. It was almost non-stop. Talk about obsessive compulsive. Man, I think I was just plain crazy back then.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe it has been 20 years since these 1991 Donruss cards were launched. I think I will get some affordable S1 and S2 wax boxes of this set to bust on video for the youngsters of today so they can see what we had to for card quality, graphic appeal, and not many inserts clouding the enjoyment process. I am sure that there isn't much demand for these singles, but it would bring back so many memories to see them in the packs, and to smell that scent of the cards that instantly brings backs memories from those great days in which we had no worries. Those are WAY gone now.