1998 Donruss Significant Signatures

I’m going to start a little different format here. Instead of cluttering up the individual pages of the master sets I build with info I’m going to move that info to a blog post.

This is one of the crazy Donruss buyout/bankruptcy era sets that I just love. A lot of the joy of collecting for me is getting into the impetus behind a set and finding out everything I can about it.

17 of the 18 players included in this set are Hall of Famers with Don Mattingly the only one that isn’t currently enshrined. I’d imagine he makes it in through the Veteran’s committee at some point so the whole set will be Hall of Fame members.

All cards in the set are serial numbered to 2,000 except the backdoored Nolan Ryan Image Variation SP that is numbered to 1,000 for….you know….reasons.

Everything seems fairly normal so far… right? Well here is where it gets fun.

Base Autograph Variations:

Phil Rizzuto only signed 1,000 of his cards in black and returned them to Donruss in time for pack out. All of his cards are numbered to 2,000 though. There are also blue ink versions of his card that started to appear after the bankruptcy so I’m assuming they were returned at some point when it was too late to include them in packs and they’ve trickled out through the secondary market.

I’ve confirmed that Ernie Banks, George Brett, Catfish Hunter, Al Kaline, Ralph Kiner, Eddie Mathews, and Willie McCovey all signed in blue and black ink in unknown amounts of each color but 2,000 autos total of each player exist and were returned to Donruss for pack out. For now the checklist stands at 32 cards with ink color variations.

At this point it wouldn’t shock me to see other players turn up with blue ink variations as well and I’ll add them to the checklist if applicable. We could just assume they all stunk at following directions and everybody signed in both blue and black ink. Or…perhaps there is another reason there are blue and black versions; more on that later.

At least for now neither the blue or black versions seem to carry any kind of premium over the other.

Refractor and SP Variations:

There are three variations of Nolan Ryan and Ozzie Smith in this set. They have the autographed refractors that were redemptions, the autographed non-refractor Image Variations that were backdoored after the bankruptcy, and the non-autographed exchange cards that were actually packed out.

There are two Koufax variations included in this set. There is the autographed (in black ink) refractor with him wearing an LA Dodgers cap and the backdoored autographed (in blue ink) non-refractor Image Variation that features him in a Brooklyn cap.

Sandy Koufax’s refractors either weren’t signed and returned in time for pack out or they were signed and returned but due to a lack of contract between Koufax and Playoff, who acquired Donruss in the middle of the process, they couldn’t be packed out. I’m leaning toward the likelihood that they were already signed since they didn’t just print a Koufax exchange card like they did with Ryan and Smith.

Playoff’s solution? They printed and packed out a base version of Billy Williams to fill out the checklist in Koufax’s spot. Here’s my issue with that and how it fits the production timeline. The Billy Williams autos already had to have been printed and returned signed. They didn’t hold up distribution to shoehorn in Billy Williams autos at the last second. At some point Koufax and Playoff worked out a contract and the refractors were distributed by redeeming a Williams autograph for the Koufax refractor autograph. They then sent both cards, the Koufax refractor and the Williams base, back to you after stamping Redeemed on the back of the Williams under his picture. That at least opens up the chance that there are unstamped Billy Williams base autos out there for another unintended variation.

If you add up all the known, at least to me, possible variations there are 32 (and counting) cards in the master set including the non-autographed exchange cards of Nolan and Ozzie. Honestly they may be the toughest cards in the whole set to get. They weren’t returned marked redeemed like the Williams base auto was as far as I can tell.

Oddballs:

Thanks to a purchase from a guy I buy a lot of 90s stuff from I found another variation to this unholy mess of a set. Donruss/Playoff kept back a few signed copies of each card as damage replacements and they aren’t stamped with a serial number. These replacement copies, at least for other more famous sets from the bankruptcy era, have become very sought after by player and set collectors. I ended up with a copy of the Ralph Kiner and it makes me wonder what other players’ replacements are out there. I won’t be adding these to my checklist or considering them part of the master set since there is no way of determining what players have one available. I will however do my best to add them to my collection if I see them.

I have also added a damage replacement copy of the Ozzie Smith Image Variation so I have a damage replacement copy of a backdoored copy of a card that was perhaps never meant to see the market. This one may be my favorite of all of them because I’m not only collecting this set but I’ve PC’d Ozzie for over 30 years now and I’m holding a card that no other Ozzie collector may have.

The newest replacement copy to join my set is Harmon Killebrew. It popped up in my eBay saved searches email and I instantly hit the $18 BIN. Even if it weren’t the replacement copy that’s stupidly cheap for a 500 HR Club Hall of Famer.

I’ve since added a replacement copy of the Don Sutton card to my stack of replacement copies that should never have made it to the public. I’ve also seen a Koufax copy sell before I could get my hands on it.

Thanks to the Beckett population report I’ve also found out that there is at least one executive proof for the Nolan Ryan Refractor from this set. I haven’t seen pics of it unfortunately so I’m unsure if it is signed. There’s also a copy of the Yogi Berra that is unsigned and unnumbered listed in the Beckett pop report.

Have I mentioned I love this set?

On a completely OCD huge fan of baseball’s history note….really Donruss? Ralph Kiner is a Pirates legend and wears a Pirates cap on his HOF Plaque. Why is he pictured as a member of the Indians for whom he played only a partial final season?

My Own Likely Misguided Musings About This Set:

Thought I was done talking right? Well, too bad.

I have a half formed theory that this set was intended for distribution in multiple products (probably just two given the relatively small player list) like Crusades and other Donruss insert sets of the same era. There are a couple of concepts, thoughts, whatever that form the basis for that theory.

1. The Refractor Autos for all three subjects (Nolan, Ozzie, Koufax) are signed in black consistently. I’ve yet to see any of the three with a blue ink auto on the Refractor version.
2. The Image Variation Autos for all three (Nolan, Ozzie, Koufax) are signed in blue consistently. I’ve yet to see any of the three with a black ink auto on the Image Variation Autos.
3. They made damage replacement copies for the Image Variations. Why would they do that unless they intended to pack them out at some point? They weren’t included in the checklist for pack out in 1998 Donruss Signatures so there had to be a second product they were intended for. Right?
4. Phil Rizzuto signed 1,000 copies in black and returned them to Donruss for pack out. It wasn’t until after the bankruptcy that his blue ink autos hit the market. That makes me think he signed the black ink copies to get them to Donruss in time and then the blues came later for a later product.

There are a few holes in my theory of course.

1. I’ve yet to see black and blue ink versions of all the base cards. If they were intended for insertion in a second product there should be blue ink variations of everyone but I’ve yet to find a Berra, Mattingly, or Musial signed in blue ink.
2. On the flip side I’ve never seen copies of the Harmon Killebrew, Don Sutton or Billy Williams signed in black ink. I could see that kind of error with Williams given his last second addition to the checklist in place of Koufax but Killebrew and Sutton should have autos out there in black ink. Perhaps Donruss intended some sort of split checklist with some players in black ink only, some in blue only, and some with both. Who knows?
3. If there was another Signature product on tap where are all the other auto cards that would continue the Millennium and Century Marks series started in 1998 Donruss Signature? Did they just dump them all into the one product or are they the ones that have trickled out in the market through the backdoor like Otis Nixon and Matt Morris? We’ll likely never know.

My thought is that they originally intended the Black ink variations for insertion into 1998 Donruss Signature with the black ink signed Refractors and the Blue Ink variations and blue ink signed Image Variations for insertion in a product that got shelved by the bankruptcy. We know that both blue and black ink copies for many players made it into 1998 Donruss Signature packs so at some point that plan was scrapped and they just inserted everything into the one product, except for the Image Variations. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in Donruss’s offices when all this was going down to see how it really happened.