Box Break and Review: 2014 Donruss Series 2

My thoughts on 2014 Donruss Series 2 ...

1) The base set violates The First Commandment of Baseball Card Product Development.

(In case your wondering, Our Lord and Savior, Jefferson Burdick, was given these Commandments by God Himself one day while he was out on a stroll on the banks of Lake Onondonga.  It's in The Bible, trust me.)

The First Commandment of Baseball Card Product Development: Thou shalt not short-print thy base cards in a Flagship product.

Between the 30 Diamond Kings (of which there were already 30 in Series One), and 25 Rated Rookies, over a third of the base set is SPed.  And we're not talking one-per-pack SPs either.  You only get ten in a 24-pack Hobby box. Which brings us to point #2

2) The base set is way too small for a product like this.

155 cards (100 if you subtract the SPs) for a flagship product.  I mean, really?   Why even bother with it then?

MEMO to Panini: If you want collectors to keep ripping packs, don't gimmick-up the base set.  MAKE THE BASE SET BIGGER!

3) Haven't we seen these guys before?

As I document in the video, many of the same players who had base cards in Series One, also have base cards in Series 2 -- which kind of defeats the whole purpose of a second series, doesn't it?

Look, I see where Panini's thoughts were.  Series One was such a hit with collectors, it made sense for them to release a second series -- even though they had no plans for S2 originally.  And since there are only so many players who switched teams in the interim, and only so many rookies that got called up, they couldn't just fill out the rest of base set with a bunch of Ham & Eggers.

Hopefully for 2015, Panini will plan out their checklist better and avoid a repeat of this year's repeats.

4) Donruss Elite needs to come back as a standalone product.

In lieu of releasing it as its own distinct product, each pack of S2 has one card from a 100-card Donruss Elite set.  These foil-fronted cards are, hands-down, the highlight of Series 2 and it makes you wonder why Panini didn't release Elite on its own.  Maybe for 2015 we'll get a proper Donruss Elite Baseball.

Speaking of Elite ...

5) Did we really need four different "Elite" inserts?

In addition to the one-per-pack "Elites," there's also "Elite Dominators" and "The Elite Series" ( continuations of the Series One inserts), and "Elite Series."  I get that The Elite Series is the "Donruss" insert and Elite Series is the "Elite" insert, but come on!  They couldn't think of anything different?  And it's not as if there aren't any Donruss Elite inserts from the past collectors wouldn't want to see back again (Title Waves, Primary Colors, Passing the Torch, Back to the Future, et al), am I right?

6) Tracy Hackler is The Man, and you know it.

For one week, I want to be Tracy Hackler.

Or two.

Or ten.

Or 1000.

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Don't get me wrong, I like this product.  It's not the "flagship" product I would have preferred -- it's more "Donruss Archives."  But for all it's faults, 2014 Donruss Baseball is still better then anything Topps has made this year.

RATING: 3 Gumsticks (out of 5).

Why Cee Angi Matters

Cee Angi represents to me the kind of "consumer" Topps ought to be marketing to: a fanatical baseball fan, who used to collect in her early years, went away for a while, and now wants to get back into collecting again.  

All of which leads me to a question I posed on Twitter last week.

@SportsCollector One hurdle: How do you explain The Hobby of 2014 to someone who hasn't collected in 20+ years? Will they "get it?"
— Chris Harris (@stalegum) February 1, 2014

Just imagine for a moment, that you haven't opened a pack of cards since before the 1994 Strike.  You probably remember parallels, but you'd probably wonder why a product has to have 14 of them.  You exited right at the peak of the "insert mania" of the early-90s, but what to make of all the hundreds of inserts?  How can you collect them all?  Is it even possible?

And we're not even at autographs & gamers, gimmicked variations, manu-relics, and other such lagniappe.

The number of collectors actually buying, much less collecting, their products is steadily declining, and it doesn't seem to me like Topps even cares.  It's easy to discount the wants of your customers when you're a monopoly.  In order to survive in the long-run, Topps needs to A) retain the collectors they have, and B) bring lapsed collectors back into The Hobby.  They're not exactly doing a great job with "A," and if you're not winning over people like Angi, then they're not doing such a great job with "B" either.