Box Break Review: 2017 Donruss NASCAR

Donruss makes it's triumphant debut in NASCAR with the 2017 set, and it positions itself as the flagship NASCAR release. There's a lot to like about this set, here's my breakdown of what I got in my hobby box.

My initial thoughts on the set: I'm actually surprised. The base set is 189 cards long, which is the largest set we've gotten since 2011, and most surprising is that the subset concept has returned in a big way! Race Kings, (and Queen, for Danica), Rated Rookie, 1984 Retro, Cup Chase, Pit Crew and Nicknames all appear as subsets in the base set. I fully expected them to be inserts, but I am glad that they were not. What I'm not glad about is the fact that most of them are short printed. I got only three of the Race Kings, 1 of the Rated Rookie, and two of the Nicknames cards. 1984 Retro was almost plentiful with 6 base cards. Pit Crew and Cup Chase are not short printed and I completed both of them. I would have liked to have seen them be not so short and cut down on the duplicates. My box yielded 106 duplicates, some of the cards giving up three examples. That's almost two full base sets.

Most of the Cup drivers have a driver card and a car card...but not all. And some of the choices are downright odd. Kyle Larson does not have a base card. Carl Edwards does not have a car card. Aric Almirola is not included in the base set at all yet appears in the autograph inserts...he also has a card in the 1984 subset but that's it.

Strange.

The design of the base card is superb.

The borders match the team colors.
The backs of the cards are bright and colorful but the second most disappointing aspect of the set (with the first being the lack of car cards for everyone and the odd exclusions as mentioned above).

There's a LOT of wasted space here. Some of that wasted space could have been removed and career stats included. Even just a total, not a season-by-season breakdown, would have been appreciated. We have not gotten a set with real stats since 2008, so it's desperately missing. What I do like about the back is that Panini has included hometowns. This is good info and something they usually ignore on the NBA cards. The colors are bright and vibrant, which I like. Mears is the only driver who has this green color. He's another driver who has a base card but no car card.

And the car cards...this is, by far, the BEST part of this set.

Not only do we get 21 car cards, they each show TWO cars! Most show the regular scheme and a special paint scheme, some show two special paint schemes, as this card does. (by the way, this was my first card from the set). Quite a few of the cards feature the Throwback cars from Darlington. 39 of the 40 cars in the race ran Throwbacks- it sure would have been nice if we got to see all of them. But this is the most car cards we've gotten in years. Discounting the 2011 set, the one time Press Pass actually got it right, you'd have to go back to the late 1990s to get this many car cards. Seriously. Expect a post dedicated to the car cards alone at some point. They are so good I'll probably post all of them together.
The backs of the car cards are the only ones that are not color coded.

They are all gray. The Pit Crew subset, which is also horizontal, and shows cars, has team color card backs.

Here is the Race Kings subset, which comprises cards #1-27 of the set, including the Race Queen card for Danica, Card #7, which I did not get in my box.

They feature the painted look like the various Kings inserts are known for...except this time they are base cards, of course.

Rated Rookies take up Cards #28-36, although most of the drivers in this subset have cards already. I got one base and one Green, and I am showing the latter.

A good Green to get- Byron is a surefire superstar, and if we had a real points system, would have won the Truck championship last year as he won 7 races, and dominated the season. He is one of four drivers to have a Rated Rookie subset card and a base card. Note that the border shows tires- but treaded tires. NASCAR has used slicks almost exclusively since 1971, but they do have treaded tires for Eldora and the road course races. The card numbers on back are also in a design reminiscent of tires.

The 1984 subset is cards #137-184, and here I have chosen to show a Gold parallel, of AJ Allmendinger.

The Golds are the most common parallel, I got 4 in my box. The gold foil scans as black, but trust me- the SN and the bar his name is printed on is gold foil. This subset falls a little flat to me. They aren't bad, by any means, but it would have been so much better if instead of the current drivers, we got actual photos from 1984, which predates NASCAR getting cards on a regular basis. There are some legends in this section of the set, but I don't have them so I don't know if they include photos from 1984. I know there are a couple of drivers who retired in the 1960s in the subset.

The Nicknames subset finishes off the checklist with cards #185-189, although some of the nicknames are kind of a stretch.
This is a Blue parallel of Daniel Suarez, denoting his Xfinity title last year. It uses the same photo as his base card.

Despite being the second easiest parallel to find based on serial numbering, I only pulled one blue from my box, but two Greens, which have 100 examples less produced. Since green is my favorite color I am happy by that.

There are also variation cards. I could do without these, mainly because they share the same number but are totally different otherwise-different photo, different text on the card back, and a nickname on the front. These are basically no different from the nicknames subset but instead of being part of the base set they just have the same number as the base card- stupid.
I pulled one from my box, and it was Kenseth. Interestingly, the base Kenseth card came from the same pack.

There are several parallels I didn't pull, but I did manage to pull an Artist Proof card, which has only 25 copies produced, making it the rarest non-printing plate parallel in the set. It features a black theme, with black text, black border, etc. The card is holofoil. Another Kenseth.

It doesn't really show in the scan but the card is refractor-like in hand. It's a nice card.

Now, that covers the base set. But there are a lot of inserts, and all of them have parallels. The relics and autographs have gold and black foil parallels, and the standard inserts all have Cracked Ice parallels which are all numbered to 999 copies, I wasn't able to pull all of them, and in fact the Pole Position insert, I pulled ONLY a Cracked Ice, no standard. The Cracked Ice look much better in hand than they do in scans. Here are, without further blathering, all the standard inserts I got. None of them yielded more than one card per set.

The inserts all feature gold foil on the standard version and holofoil on the Cracked Ice versions. The Call to the Hall set is the only one that includes photography from the 2017 season. Everything else reflects 2016, which makes sense when you consider that the set came out the week the 2017 season started.

Now, each box promises one autograph and two relics, and I got exactly that. My autograph came out of my first first pack, and is my first and currently only card of third generation driver Todd Gilliland.

Interestingly, the Rubber Relics set includes more than one card for some drivers, who had more than one standard sponsor. Jimmie Johnson is one of them- this card is for his alternate, Kobalt car. The back mentions a specific race but it's unclear if the tire piece used comes from that race or if they just chose to highlight that race. I suspect it may actually be the race the tire is from, because for Johnson it highlights a race he finished 16th in- nothing special for the multi-race winner and 2016 Champion.

The Logano card, part of the 1984 Retro Relics insert, does not say what the material is but it feels like firesuit. I really wish Panini would tell you what it is they are putting on the cards. With NASCAR it's easier to figure out what the material is- there's no mistaking tire or sheet metal, for example- than for the other sports, which feature multiple options that use the same basic material, there's no real way to know, unless you get a patch and can match it to the jersey photo.

Overall, this is a GREAT set, and a worthy flagship. It's not perfect, but I will say it's Panini's best effort so far. I completed the non-SP base cards from my box, with many duplicates to spare, but I still want to pick up a blaster to see if I can get some of the short prints or maybe a parallel.

Five drivers made their cardboard debut in this set: Todd Gilliland, Alon Day, Julia Landauer, Matt Tifft and Noah Gragson. The latter four appear only in the Signatures series, while Gilliland appears in the Rated Rookie subset. I added 8 new people to my collection, which is a very high number for a NASCAR box. I don't know what the record is, but this may be it, not counting when I first started collecting and everyone was new, of course. New to me were: Gilliland, Byron, Kate Dallenbach, John Hunter Nemechek, Cameron Hayley, Daniel Hemric, Christopher Bell and Ben Kennedy.

Thanks to my mom for giving me the box as a surprise gift! 

January 2017 Trade & gift recap

Before I begin the post, you may notice that I've now added some rudimentary tradelists among the top bar of Cardboard History. I've got a long way to go before I have everything posted there- we're talking years here- but maybe it will help me make some more trades with my readers. I will accept any sports card in trade and pretty much any non-sports card- no Garbage Pail Kids please- even if I don't actually need it or actively collect the sport. Yes, you can trade me early 1990s baseball cards that had 22 billion copies each made- I don't want to let any possible trade be missed, I'll even do a trade for "future considerations"- if you absolutely don't have anything to send me although considering I'll accept just about literally anything that should not be a problem. (I also collect diecast cars, plastic models, comic books, coins, currency, stamps and books about history so I would trade cards for any of them as well). I don't know how many cards are waiting to be typed in, because my tradelist on the Trading Card database lists over 7000 cards for the NBA alone- and I have about 7 Avon boxes waiting to be typed in...each Avon box holds about 2000 cards if my memory is correct. And that's just the NBA. I have not even looked in the boxes since 2004 or 05.

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January 2017 was a very interesting month for me in the hobby. I knocked out my two main goals on the year and finally- on January 31st- got some work done on my wantlist on here, something I really need to put more effort into. I only did half of one season but at least I worked on it some. I also began the process of getting my NASCAR cards up on the Database.

Of course the biggest news of January is that I went full on into NHL hockey. It's really changed my life- for the better- already. Since January 1st I have watched at least some hockey, even if it is only the nightly recap show on NHL network, On the Fly- every single day. I've still managed to stay up with the NBA and fit in most of the 24 Hours of Daytona- my favorite auto race of the year- at one point streaming the race on my computer and watching the NHL all-star skills competition on my phone at the same time. (not easy to do!)

I only pulled off three trades in the month of January, one of which I posted about already. The next  was with Trading Card database member Sportzcommish. Oddly enough, I got all football from him. Yes, that is not a misprint, lol. I had some cards he wanted, and I will take any sports card in trade, so we made a trade. He sent me a bunch of 1990 Action Packed. Here are just two of them.

Technically they are both from the Rookie Update set.

A trade I almost forgot about and had to edit the previous paragraph for was with spazmatastic, also of the Database and NUTS, someone I've traded with before and chat with often- just about every day. He sent me the Panini Instant card for Jimmie Johnson's 7th championship and I sent him some Grant Hills and a Jimmie Johnson he didn't have. I ended up sending him 10 cards for this one and I still don't feel I've sent him enough after agreeing to a trade last month and not being able to find the cards. He's a big Jimmie fan.

I still have not purchased one of the Instant cards for the NBA. I really need to so I can have the set represented in my collection.

On the 31st I agreed to a huge trade on the Database (of course) that is going to see about 400 cards change hands. It'll be my largest trade in about 2 years, when I pulled off a massive trade (yet again on the Database) that saw more than 1000 cards change hands, the largest trade I've ever been involved in.

I received several gifts from fellow collectors this month, mostly "Welcome to hockey" gifts. Card collectors are very generous people, I knew that already, but I am going to always be in a debt of gratitude for the gifts I have received from fellow hockey collectors. I know that I will never be able to repay the generosity I've received over the years, and continue to receive. I'm truly humbled- I feel quite a bit like George Baily at the end of It's A Wonderful Life, truly.
I received a gift that will get it's own post shortly- probably tomorrow- that I've had written since the past weekend. I received not one but two gifts from CrazieJoe-one I have shown, my first error of the year, and one that is really huge and would have gotten it's own post had I not been feeling a little overwhelmed! He sent me a 660 count box stuffed full with hockey cards! I suspect they may be rejects from his SantaLot, but I don't mind. They are all new to me. I didn't go through all of them yet. To keep from getting overwhelmed and spread out the fun I decided to only go through a portion of the box the day it arrived and I've pulled out some cards since then. There's been some great stuff in there, but of course, to me it's all great.
I have not scanned most of them yet but it's mostly early 1990s- truly the best time in cards. A big run of 1990-91 O-Pee-Chee, 1991-92 Upper Deck, 1991-92 Pro Set, three different versions of 1991-92 Score, and so much much. Also included were some minor league cards, which I enjoy.

Although this screams 1980s it's actually from the 1990-91 season.

My first and only card of either person, and team! There's so much more but they are all on the Database already so I've set them aside for now. I missed pulling any out of the box yesterday, I need to make up for it today. There are enough cards left in the box that I will not be finished going through them in February.
One card back I want to show...that is one seriously creepy brand logo.

It's the podrace announcer from The Phantom Menace! Not really, but close.

I got a gift from a Database member that included some more hockey cards. they went as far back as a 1971-72 O-Pee-Chee card that he had recently upgraded, to a regional promo from 1993-94:

to a super shiny Hall of Famer (my first card of him)

to a stack of 2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Retro parallels in the famous skate design.

and more. But my favorite has to be this final card. And Howe!

My first WHA card! When he wrote up descriptions for me of what he was sending, he likened the WHA to the ABA, knowing that I am coming from a predominantly NBA background. When doing research on Wikipedia I found out he was much closer on that mark than I could have imagined or inferred- the same two men founded the ABA in 1967 before founding the WHA in 1971! It really IS the NHL's version of the ABA! Both upstart leagues were absorbed by their respective main league that they were trying to compete against, both leagues saw four of their teams become members of the currently active league with the rest folding. However, unlike the NBA where only the Nets have moved since absorption, the four WHA teams that made it in the NHL have seen three of the four teams move and even change names/identities.

Unusual to not show any NBA in a trade post, but with my broadened horizons you never know what will show up here.

Overall, it was actually a pretty terrible month- so much pain for me physically that I could barely stand it- but card wise, it was incredible. Thank you to my trading partners and friends. I have the feeling that I'm forgetting someone/some trade, but I've been so "out of it" due to my continuing health problems that if I did leave somebody out, please know it's not a slight but just me not remembering.  And even though I showed only a tiny fraction of the cards, I am very appreciative of all of them!

Total Blaster 16 & 17

As I mentioned briefly the other day, one of the blasters had been opened and had the relic card stolen. I really didn't get too much from Blowout- a $10 shipping voucher which I may never use- so that's disappointing.

The 4 cards in the blaster were not super spectacular either, in that 3 of them were duplicates.

Aric Almirola again. Jeff Gordon red is a dupe. Bowyer Acceleration is not new.
Tim Flock Hall of Fame is new. That's a good one, I like Tim Flock. It was seeing a feature on him, Junior Johnson and Russ Truelove in 1998 when NASCAR celebrated it's 50th Anniversary that directed me towards becoming more than just a current fan and dedicating much of my life to learning the history of the sport. Sadly cancer took him later in '98.

Today was Blaster #17 and it again was kind of a let down...but that is all on Press Pass.

Jimmie Johnson base is new. Newman red is not. Keselowski relic is a duplicate. Keselowski Acceleration is the 4th time in the 17 boxes I've pulled that very card. Ingram is new for this project but was in my collection from one of the two blasters I got when the set was new in 2014.

So, in two blasters, 9 cards and only 2 were new, although the Keselowski will also count as I count duplicates of serial numbered cards.

Three to go, and still many base cards missing. With how this is going, I would kind of be surprised if I get more than one new base card. I've got a ton of posts in the queue waiting to go, and I'm sure Christmas will lead to a few more as well, as I told my family all I wanted was cards...at the rate I'm going I am likely to post every day remaining of this year!

Total Blaster 13

Before I get into my latest edition of what is now my least popular series, I got a package from Peter K. Steinberg of Baseball Every Night. This is a blog I was not aware of but I found a comment from Peter on Bob Walk the Plank and clicked on his name. I am guessing this is my Blogger Secret Santa package but I didn't open it yet just to be sure. Peter or Matthew, if you see this can I get a confirmation on that? I have added his blog to my blogroll so I will see updates from him in the future.

I also need to thank Tyler of Rekindling the Cardboard Flame for sending me along 2 packs of 2016 Topps Update. I opened one of them and I think it may be the second baseball pack I've ever opened...but I can't be sure as my memory is like swiss cheese. Large holes obliterating pretty much everything between 1998 and yesterday. It is the first time I've gotten the smoke design of 2016 in hand, and since every blog has pretty much commented about them already, I'll just say that I don't think they look as bad in hand as they do in scans.

OK, now the cards you all didn't come here to see, based on my declining viewership of this series.

 Back to smart phone pictures today.
Jeb Burton, son of 2002 Daytona 500 winner Ward, was considered a young gun in 2014, but now is considered more of a field filler, although he hasn't gotten much time in any good equipment.
Mark Martin red parallel...Mark's final season was 2013, but he still got a base card in this set (all photos and text in it relates to 2013, not 2014). Mark won 40 races over his 31 year career, three times hitting the 5 win mark, with a top performance of 7 in 1998, but he is most well known for being the driver with the most second place points finishes without a championship, of which he has 5...although by all rights he should have been 1990's Champion as he got a bogus penalty that cost him 46 points, he finished the season 20 something points out of first.
Jimmie Johnson Acceleration, first time we have seen that card in this project, but unfortunately I already had the card. I had a grand total of 2 blasters worth of this set before I began this project, and that happened to be one of the two I had gotten. Spoiler alert: I'm still finding it hard to believe he has now won 7 Cup championships. And I would not be surprised if he gets more. He still trails Jeff Gordon for 3rd place in all-time wins by 14 but he might get that too- he gets 5 per year pretty much every year, with a best of 10 in 2007, one of only a handful of drivers to hit double digits in a year in the modern short schedule era (1972-current).
Junior Johnson is the second time his Hall of Fame placque appears in this project. Jimmie and Junior are not related.

Relic is Matt Kenseth...again. Kenseth has become one of my least favorite drivers. At least it's a nice big relic, fairly low numbered, and the photo depicts a special paint scheme, the only card it appears on that I'm aware of. Although you can only see half of it due to burnout smoke....it still counts.

At least it wasn't another Bowyer.

November Trade Recap

After a few down months, November had me make a couple of trades back and forth with other bloggers, so much so that I'm typing up the beginning of this post on November 17th, where usually I whip it up the night before I post it, or even right when I post it. But I have too much to cover to do that this month!

First up is a trade with Spazmatastic who I know from both NUTS and the Trading Card Database. Adam and I chat regularly- usually sending each other a message every night- mostly about NASCAR, and it actually evolved into a trade. (not the first we've done) First things first, I feel terrible about this trade because I promised him two cards and then couldn't find them. I made up the difference with paypal but I still feel terrible about it.
From him I got the Panini Instant card from the Charlotte race, which his favorite driver Jimmie Johnson won. Only 80 copies of this card were purchased, and he got 5 of them. I bought the first Instant NASCAR card, but I have not gotten any more on my own since then or any of the NBA ones. I meant to write a post about the Truex card I bought but I never got around to it.

I got another PWE from north of the border from CrazieJoe. included were some more Ultra cards from 2004-05, a set I love but needed a few of, luckily he's pulled more than a few of them. 5 more of them joined my collection here, including this card of Brian Cardinal. I like getting cards of big name players of course, but what I really love is to get cards of obscure guys. This is only the 14th Brian Cardinal card in my collection. Ray Allen, who was also in this PWE, has about 300 cards in my collection, for example.

Another rather obscure guy in the PWE was Willie Green, who constantly foiled Charles Barkley's attempts at "Who he play for?" I don't know how many I have of him yet as I have not scanned my collection of him, but it's probably only about 15 cards give or take.

I posted on the Trading Card Database that I was looking for a copy of the Craig Sager card from 2016 Topps Update's First Pitch insert, so member griffey423 just sent me one. Much appreciated!

New member of the Trading Card Database sahal694 is also a basketball collector and we pulled off a simple two card trade. While I've done hundreds of trades online, going back to around the year 2000, it was the first trade he'd ever done online. That's the second time in the past year I got to be somebody's first trade, but I can't remember the other one. The bubble mailer I sent to him covered from New York to Phoenix in just two days! Of the two cards he sent me, one did something that doesn't happen too often- it completed an insert set! I'm a base card guy, that's well documented, but I like non-base cards as well. Inserts getting completed for me is fairly rare, and in fact, I don't even have a list of the ones I've completed....that's definitely something I need to do! David Robinson Flagship Series was a 10-card insert set in 1992-93 Skybox, and #R6 was the last one I needed to finish it off. The Ray Allen from 1996-97 Stadium Club Rookies I brings me to within only two cards for that set, as well.

 My friend who sent me the Racing Champions card that got it's own post earlier in the month sent me some other great stuff too. And not just NASCAR!

 This is only my 3rd flag relic and first Blue Flag. The blue flag with yellow stripe is one of the rarest in NASCAR, used to signal out a lapped car in the way of the leaders, it's the second rarest flag to see, with only the reg flag displayed less frequently (although with the growing number of rain relays it's a about a draw now). Another rare flag is red with yellow X, it is displayed when the pits are closed.

Terry Bradshaw! My first card of him. While from everything I've heard he was a great football player, I know him more from his many appearances on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It's Serially Numbered to 999 as well.

While I teased the shifter boot card he sent me in the first post, I am going to hold onto that for now as I have an idea for a post that it will show up in shortly, hopefully by the end of 2016.

Thanks for reading.

A Prizm blaster...

My local Target finally stocked the Prizm set, and they only put out one blaster, which my brother got for me yesterday. It was a little disappointing but upon reflection it isn't too bad.

Each blaster of Prizm includes 24 cards, and for me exactly half of them were duplicates, including all three Prizm parallels which was the most disappointing...but I've already traded them for the remainder of the base cards I needed so it worked out pretty good in the end!

For me Prizm seems to be a Matt Kenseth set with some other drivers. Kenseth is my second least favorite driver currently in Cup, so of course I get lots of cards of him.

The Green Flag prizms are my favorite parallel in the set, so I am happy to get another, but it had to be Kenseth, of course.

The tire piece came in the same pack as the Kenseth.

It's SN25/75. It looks like they are doing the same as Press Pass did, hobby versions of relics show the driver and retail versions the car. I don't have a problem with that. More cards to chase and you all know by now that I love the car cards. This looks much better in person, by the way.

I got my first two die cut inserts in the same pack.

Raising the Flag is really nice- car shots, some of them older. This one is from 2011. I have since pulled a Kyle Busch from the same set from when he won the Championship last year.

Machinery is good as it's all car photos, but there's too much design and not enough photo. I think it would have worked better horizontal, something I rarely say.

I also got another Winner's Circle insert. Guess who?

And then, out of the last pack, I got a Prizm parallel from the Winner's Circle insert...guess who...again?

I also got 6 of the base cards I needed, as the hobby box only yielded 55 of of 100.

And that's the entirety of the blaster. It will probably be the only one I open...I have all the base cards I need coming to me in the mail, and I don't know if I'll want to spend money to chase the parallels and the guaranteed one per box hit (either an Autograph or relic). Also, I got the only one available at my local Target already. So I might not even have the opportunity. I'd like to get to Wal-Mart and try one from there as they have exclusive inserts as well, but our Wal-Mart is not good for cards and there is no guarantee they will ever stock them.

While I was there, they also put out the 15-card hanger pack, which has exclusive Red, White & Blue Prizms. I love them. I got two hangers, but only opened one when I made the scans for this post. Interestingly, I pulled the standard Prizms for all three of the RWB ones in my hobby box.

 My first Legend variation!

 It appears the Legend variation Prizm does not have the borders.

I like the Winner's Circle inserts. They are the most common. 

The second hanger gave me 10 new cards out of the 15 so it was the better of the two. Of course I managed to get ANOTHER Kenseth Prizm out of it. Oh well, at least it wasn't Clint Bowyer.

I still think this is a great debut set from Panini and I'm happy to know that I will be completing it shortly, and I really love the various Prizm parallels that look much nicer in hand than in scans.

The real reason for heading to Target though was because my phone got too full to play Simpsons Tapped Out anymore...so my brother bought me a tablet!

 I have finally moved into the 21st century :)  And yes, that is a direct link to Cardboard History on my main screen on my phone! If any of you in the blogosphere play Tapped Out, let's be neighbors!