1980-present variations

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

I've spent an embarrassingly large amount of time and money studying the 1990 Donruss set. I'm up to about ten 20-box cases, six 10-box cases, and countless rack cases. I've sorted each by case code in a spreadsheet so I could see the chronology of the E&Vs.

I started with the known list of E&Vs, which was pretty cut and dry. Then I began ripping packs and examining every card. If a card had "error or variation" material to it, it got put to the side. If another example was found in a different case from a different seller, it got added to the list. Once it got added to the list, I began accruing them.

The most interesting thing about this set is that it didn't follow the conventional "rare errors are in the earliest boxes" standard. As Donruss went in to correct one EorV, they inadvertently created two more. This process repeated itself over and over.

It's important to recognize just how nonexistent their QC was. It's as if someone called a week before product was due and said "Oh yeah, by the way, we've got to produce a baseball card set for distribution in a week." That, plus the smallest puzzle piece of the era and one of the tightest wraps just laid waste to those bright red borders. A significant portion of the earliest printing got multiple coats of red and are now known as the Magenta Run.

People always ask me "So which ones are the rarest?" Honestly, I don't feel comfortable making that kind of statement yet. What I can tell you is, the Harold Baines Line in Front of Star was in distribution for one day, and it just so happened to be the same day Donruss corrected the "AS Experience" / "Recent ML Experience" errors on the back of the All-Star cards. Theorize with that all you'd like.

I've accrued five more cases that I need to rip and will hopefully get to soon. I know these will never be worth anything but this set captivated me as a kid and was my introduction to "error boxes." I mean, this set had it all: reverse negatives, missing black lines on the back, wrong wording on every All-Star card, Nolan Ryan's switched backs, a line through the front of an All Star, wrong photos, cropping differences, and checklists variations.

Sitting in the LCS watching he grown ups rip the expensive packs and seeing each one of them gush over each error they pulled was fascinating to me. Not to mention those bright red colors and the chase to pull a Ben McDonald Rated Rookie. Every penny I spend on this endeavor is like flushing it down the drain but it's so much fun I simply don't care.

When it's all said and done, '90 Donruss will probably be the most fertile E&V set of the era (and that's not counting splatter patterns or "INC" [no period]).

And please, be a responsible collector. If you see someone advertising a Donruss card as an error because it doesn't have a period after "INC" do the right thing, kick them in the jublees.

Arthur