2016 Donruss Optic Box Break

I got this from my aunt as a birthday present back in December. While the card shop was pretty depleted on their baseball wax at the time, they still had this in stock. I really liked the standard 2016 Donruss issue so I opted for it's Chrome brother, Donruss Optic.

Here's what the open box looks like. Much like Chrome there are only four cards per pack. Each box has 20 packs and promises two autographs on average. To be honest, I'm not much of an autograph person when it comes to getting hits from a box as I much prefer relic cards. Like I said, this was the best the card shop had to offer so lets see what I got.

Here's some of the base cards. They're exactly like the standard Donruss cards but only chromed. I like how the players sort of stand out from the background on these.

One thing I really liked about these were the Diamond King cards, which chrome up pretty cool. These weren't in every pack but possibly every other pack. I wasn't really keeping track. I did get a few duplicates which was a little disappointing.

Another Donruss staple are the Rated Rookie cards. I was pretty pleased to get all three of these out of the box, especially the Peraza and Schwarber. Say what you will about Panini and their lack of licensing but at least with the Diamond Kings and Rated Rookie cards, I feel like I get a lot more bang for my buck when getting packs or boxes.

As is the case with Panini products, there are a lot of parallels. I decided to show one of each color parallel I got out of the box. The Jose Fernandez is numbered 1/50 but I really dig the Lucroy, Rizzo, and Soler cards.

I was a little saddened by the lack of insert cards but with only four cards per pack, what can you expect. The Illusion card is an Optic only insert and came at one per box. That's the second Schwarber card I pulled out of the box and couple that with the Andrew Benintendi card, I'm pretty happy.

Here's the first of the two guaranteed autographs and to be honest I had to consult Baseball Reference to see exactly who Alex Dickerson is. Turns out he played in 84 games for San Diego last year hitting  .257 with 10 HRs and 37 RBI (sorry, I don't do sabermetrics, I'm old school when it comes to my stats). Judging by the info I found on the Padres site, it looks like he might be their everyday left fielder going into 2017.

Here's my other guaranteed auto and my THIRD Kyle Schwarber card of the box. I was pretty thrilled to pull this as my luck is never that good when it comes to pulls and hit. I don't really mind the fact that it's on a sticker either, I'm just happy to have a Schwarber autograph in my collection.

Despite the fact I got a Kyle Schwarber autograph and some really cool parallels, I don't feel that it was worth the $80 price tag. Ripping the box too went by really fast with only four cards per pack, even though I took my time. For 2017, I'll dive into some regular Donruss but will probably avoid Optic unless I find some neat singles at a card show or I get some in a trade.