The New and Logoless

@CrackinWax brings our first look at 2020 Donruss, Panini style. #CrackinWaxMailday

Things have been wild lately, but the blog posts about cards must roll on even as the real sports are all shut down. I bought into a pair of box breaks last week over at Crackin' Wax, and the goods were delivered on Wednesday while I watched the escalation of a public health crisis through the lens of ESPN's live NBA coverage. Scary stuff.

Break #1 was 2020 Topps Heritage, which served to knock off a couple more SPs from my set/team builds. I'm not going to focus on that here, because I want to take a look at the new stuff. I had more or less decided to ignore new Donruss cards at least for the time being, because I've never been that impressed with them in the past. However, I still want the cards of the guys who play for my team, so I bought in just this one time. I have a small lot of Giants from this set with a few parallels and some nice nods to the original 1986 Donruss set in case anyone is interested, as they were my second randomly assigned team.

Let's check out some of the Cardinals now.

I know that Topps uses Getty Images these days for their photos, but does anyone know what Panini does for baseball? You would expect more hatless close-up shots in a set that can't show logos, but that hasn't been their thing at all.

Here's Goldy on one of my earliest looks at seeing how the Cardinals powder blue road jerseys don't always scream blue at you even on a baseball card. Sometimes it's hard to see on television, as well.

Lots and lots of colored parallels in this set, because Panini.

There are photo variations in this set as expected, but it turns out that this time each photo variation exists in each parallel version. Seems crazy!

The Cardinals must have been playing another red team on this day, because Hicks was wearing a navy blue cap.

I haven't said anything about the design yet. I think it's probably better than the last few years, but not by much.

Here's a nice shot of Yadi wearing a baby blue chest protector and mask to match his uniform of the day. I still need to track down another copy of this card for Erin.

Here's the blue version.

The break even was kind enough to spit out a signed card for me. I don't have a lot of Genesis Cabrera cards and it seems like the Cardinals have a million pitchers right now, but it still seems like he has a bright future even if it's not in the 2020 rotation (assuming that's even a thing.)