The Rookies

Another tribute to '80s Donruss cards. 

Among the bargains to be had at the most recent monthly card show were a stack of boxed sets of what could be generously considered a tribute to a late '80s staple: Donruss The Rookies. When Panini revived the brand for baseball in 2014, they put out a set in two series that included an insert concept called "The Rookies", a nod to the year end rookie-centric answer to Topps Traded and Fleer Update.

Like their base card counterparts, The Rookies: 2014 Style (no logos) are not the most attractive looking things in the world, but they do include the classic logo. The box set includes all of the inserts from Series 1 and Series 2, plus a whole lot more -- more than fifty additional box set exclusive cards to fill out the set at 100 even. I haven't done a side by side comparison between a pack-pulled insert and its box set counterpart, but as far as I can tell, there's no discernible difference.

The set includes 4 Cardinals cards, none of which I owned previously. Only Kolten Wong remains on the team roster today, while Marco Gonzales is trying to make a go of it in the Mariners rotation and Randal Grichuk is trying to stick in the Toronto outfield (and piling up a lot of strikeouts.)

And then, of course, there's Oscar. RIP.

Each box promises one autograph card as a bonus. This Aaron Sanchez, confusingly, is derived from another set entirely, but the back of the box warned me that this might happen. (Also, apparently, you have a chance to pull an unsigned Masahiro Tanaka "Rookie Ticket" card, which doesn't sound very autographed at all!)

Strangely, there was a second auto included, which uses the regular The Rookie design.

I'm only keeping the Cardinals card from this set, so the rest will generally be up for grabs. I'll probably hang on to the George Springer card, because I tend to hoard his stuff for some reason, and the Sanchez auto will probably be heading off to Canada. The rest is fair game. It's a pretty decent crop of rookies overall, with Betts and DeGrom included in the bunch among others. It's too bad about the logos, though.