Ripping Some Junk Wax Packs

What to do? What to do?

I've got a handful of junk wax packs laying around from repacks I've opened recently and I'm at a loss on what to do with them. Should I rip them and put them in individual posts? Or should I just tear into them and then show off the findings all in one post.

I know, these are troubling times, right?

I think probably for the better part of my sanity, I'll rip them and share the findings all in one post here. I do have some hockey ones as well but I'll save those for another time, these will be all baseball and, boy, do I have some winners here ... 1991 Fleer Ultra, 1991 Donruss Series 2, and 1988 Donruss.

Let's go from least intriguing to most intriguing and start with 1988 Donruss

I have a supposed complete set of this I picked up at the community yard sales last year for a mere three bucks that I have yet to go through. Not even a Danny Tartabull Diamond Kings card can save this batch of five. The borders and posed shots just make this feel dark. Give me the gaudiness of 1990 Donruss over this any day.

Things improve a little bit here with Mike Witt and Juan Samuel. One positive thing I always liked about this set was the use of the team logo in the bottom right.

And the last six of this pack, probably the most interesting batch. Take a close look at Mickey Tettleton, he's got a hung hunk of chaw in his mouth. This batch was very Brewers heavy with Robin Yount, Bill Wegman, and Dan Plesac. I always like the picture on the Jerry Hairston card, even as a kid.

As you can see, not much to get excited about since it's 1988 Donruss. Moving on, one of my personal favorites of the junk wax era, it's 1991 Donruss!

I've said before that I much prefer the blue border series 1 over the green border series 2. However, I'm slowly warming up to series 2 and I like that Donruss tried something new by giving each series a different border color. The photos are also much improved from 1988. The team logo is still there too, albeit in the bottom left corner. I also feel there is more star power here in general, even if the cards aren't worth the paper they're printed on, case in point Dave Justice and Will Clark as the first two cards out of the gate. 

Oh cool, Ozzie Guillen and Curt Schilling cards! Plus, it's Schilling in a bright orange Orioles uniform. 

The final five of the pack and look, there a Mo Vaughn Rated Rookie plus another cool Orioles card of Randy Milligan. That's some 1991 Donruss series 2. Overall, not a bad pack and I got some pretty neat cards. If I'd had opened this pack in 1991, I think I would've been satisfied.

Now, onto the final break, a pack of a product I've never opened before, that being 1991 Fleer Ultra.

So Fleer tried to get into the "premium offering" game in 1991 by debuting Fleer Ultra and I'll admit, I'm a little underwhelmed. Sure, the design is worlds better than the main set that year but the nameplate at the bottom reminds me of 1991 Fleer football and it still feels a little bland.

So far, Kirby Puckett is the best card of the pack. The Barry Bonds card is part of the ten-card Ultra Team insert set. 

Nothing here to get excited about really.

Again, still nothing to get overly excited about although I guess a Rick Aguilera card is better than nothing. There was also a sticker included in the pack although I forgot to photograph it.

So it turns out that the pack I was most excited about was the pack that yielded some of the least fun. In order of worst to best, I'd put these as 88 Donruss, 91 Ultra, and then 91 Donruss as the best. I guess this could be considered a pack war of sorts but I don't see it that way. I just see it as a excuse to rip some old junk wax packs. This was fun though.

Variations on a Theme (aka Five Packs of 2018 Donruss)

Despite the fact that Panini doesn't have an MLB license, Donruss is one of my favorite releases of the year, mainly because every time you open a pack, there's usually something neat included (parallels, numbered cards, etc.). I had to stop by the card shop for a friend to see if they had any more bowling coupons as she was taking her son and a bunch of his friends bowling for his birthday. The coupons were all gone but I just had to make a purchase. There were two different pack prices on the box, $3.49 and $3.99. I asked the shopkeeper about it and he said "well, I'll just let you have as many as you want at $3.49". Fine by me. I grabbed five packs plus two Pokemon packs for my son to put in his Easter basket and headed home.

The first card of the first pack and it's Nolan Ryan. Pretty cool! Two other things that make this a really neat card, at least to me. First, it's a throwback 1984 design and the other is it's Nolan Ryan pitching as a Met against the Reds at Riverfront Stadium. How can I tell it's Riverfront Stadium? Check out the color of the seats in the background. Riverfront was the only stadium I knew that had blue outfield seats above the right field wall. I managed more of these 84-style cards but thought this was the best one by far.

A handful of base cards. Donruss is finally getting to the point where I can actually differentiate the respective sets. The first few issues looked pretty much identical but last year with the 1990-ish design, Panini finally got out of the basic designs and put a little more effort into it. This year, it's a completely crazy and wild design. I dig all of these cards, especially the Cozart card and it lists him with his new team and the old school uniform on Odubel Herrera.

The lone Reds card, if you could call it that, from the packs. With the background and no official logos, it looks more like Tony Perez and Davey Concepcion at an old-timers softball game.

Can't say I'm a big fan of the Diamond Kings design this year. I much preferred the old school style of Diamond Kings in previous releases.

The thing with Donruss is the variations and the parallels and, oh boy, do we have those this year. First there's the "nickname" variations. The only one of these I've ever heard of is "Iron Man" on the Cal Ripken card. I honestly think the other two are made up.

Here we have a parallel of the same and a parallel of the Kirby Puckett variation as well. We now have parallels of the variations, are you keeping track yet?

This Bryce Harper is numbered 01/25 ... you'll just have to believe me as I tried to take a picture of the serial number as proof but it was pretty much impossible. This must be one of the Mother's Day Ribbon cards.

I though this Jose Abreu was weird because it's in black and white, it turns out it's just a variation of the base card. My head is now officially spinning because of all these.

So, thoughts on this year's Donruss ... it's, well, different. I don't mind the base cards and the 1984 style cards but the crazy parallels, variations, and parallels of variations I could do without. Normally, Donruss is one of my favorite issues of the year (I really enjoyed last year's cards) but I think I might have to stray away from most of these this year, unless we're talking the 1984 style cards.

Back Packs: 1995 Donruss Series 2

Pardon the horrible picture here. I realized after I opened the pack that I had forgotten to take a beauty shot of the pack. Quite the beauty, huh Marge. Anyway, this is 1995 Donruss, a set that took foil to a new extreme as pretty much everything that wasn't part of the picture done in foil. This fine pack from series 2 yields 18 cards. Let's see what awaits us.

#548 Scott Brosius

#348 David West

#357 Rafael Palmiero

The design on these is definitely well, interesting. You've got a full bleed photo with the Donruss logo in foil in the upper left. The bottom has another shot of the player in an inset shaped like home plate with ... *cough, cough* ... more foil, this time with a stripe featuring the team name and the players name. Above the plate inset, the position is listed with some stars creating an arch above it. All the foil, makes the player name incredibly hard to read. So much so in fact that I had to zoom in like crazy to make them out in the scan.

As far as the first batch of players here, I remember Brosius catching the final out of a World Series (I think it was the 1998 Series) for the Yankees. Looking up his career stats, 1995 looked to be his first season as the A's primary third baseman hitting .262/.342/.452 in 123 games. His most notable years though as mentioned were with the Yankees, where he was an All-Star in 1998 and won a gold glove in 1999. 

#368 Mike Devereaux

#386 Rusty Meacham

#498 Don Slaught

Rusty Meacham I have zero remembrance of. Probably the most notable player here is Don Slaught who carved out a pretty decent season in 1995 in what would be his last season with Pittsburgh.

#396 Eric Plunk

#477 Chuck Finley

#493 Cris Carpenter

The action shots on these look like they were taken from the same vantage point. Chuck Finley played for longer than I thought he did, retiring after the 2002 season. He spent 14 years with the Angels, winning 165 games for them over those seasons. After departing Anaheim, he had stints with the Indians and Cardinals. 

#403 Tim Salmon

#442 John Roper

#468 Tony Tarasco

I may have told this story before here but John Roper was the first player I ever got an in person autograph from. He was doing an autograph signing at the local mall during a card show once but I didn't have anything for him to sign. Lucky for me, one of the vendors had extra Reds cards for 25 cents, one of which was a 1994 Pinnacle John Roper. I bought the card and took it over to the center of the mall to have it signed. I'm not sure whatever happened to that card now though.

#457 Zane Smith

#450 Bip Roberts

#550 Chili Davis checklist

Bip Roberts was on his second stint with the Padres in 1995, having resigned with them after leaving the Reds via free agency. After the season, he was traded to the Royals for Wally Joyner and would hang around for a few more seasons before retiring after the 1998 season. He is perhaps best remember for his time with the Padres, but his best season was 1992 for the Reds in which he was an All-Star, finished 8th in MVP voting, and hit .323/.393/.432 in 147 games for a Reds team that won 90 games that season.

#522 Joe Carter

#380 Kirby Puckett

The last two cards in the pack and two pretty solid players. The 1995 season was Kirby's last but he went out with a bang, being named an All-Star, walloping 23 homers, with a .314 average in 137 games. I guess that this could be classified as a sunset card as well, unless he had cards in the 1996 releases, which he very well could. Carter had a pretty good season in 1995 as well, despite being on the backside of his career. For a Blue Jays team that only won 56 games that year, Carter hit .253/.300/.428 in 139 games.

That's it for this pack. This was the last of the packs I had in reserve that were worth sharing. The other packs I opened were literally nothing special so I felt like there was nothing worth talking about.