Veteran
collectors at the time might have been forgiven for ignoring the prognostication presented to us in each wax pack of 1990 Donruss baseball cards that spring.
After all, the powerful Oakland A’s had ascended to their rightful place as World Series champions in the fall of 1989 after being rudely dispatched by the Los Angeles Dodgers and Kirk Gibson the year before. But as the 1990s dawned, the Bash Brothers — Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco — were poised to lead a cast that included 
perennial Cy Young candidate Dave Stewart, budding relief legend Dennis Eckersley, and a lineup of fellow mashers to a string of championships.
And, while the Cincinnati Reds had had a nice run as contenders in the National League West, all of that came to an end when manager Pete Rose embroiled the team and the game in a gambling scandal that still taints the era. There was no reason to think we’d see any kind of Red October outside the theater for years to come.
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Yet, Donruss was adamant that the Reds, or at least “red” was not necessarily dead, and they shouted that message to us from every card front.
(Looking for 1990 Donruss baseball card values? Check out our rundown of the 25 most valuable cards from the set, right here.)
Notice This
By the spring of 1990, the baseball card market was growing crowded, with Bowman, Sportflics, Score, and Upper Deck having joined the traditional triumvirate of Topps, Fl
eer, and Donruss on store shelves. And, with budding anticipation that new brands would be joining the premium fray, the old standbys were under a lot of pressure to stand out.
And what better way to distinguish yourself than with a bold, maybe even controversial, design?
For Donruss in 1990, this meant using color in a way that no other card maker had ever tried before.
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In particular, the front of each 1990 Donruss card is dominated by a bright red border punctuated by a swath of colorful bubbles in the middle two thirds of the left and right margins.
The top of the card starts off in the upper lefthand corner with a black-and-white “Donruss ’90” logo. Beneath that bit of branding are two rule lines with the player’s name scrawled in white script, angled up across the staff. On the second line, the player’s position appears in white block lettering, and his team name is given the same treatment, perched on the thin black upper border of the picture.
Oh yes, there is a full-color player photo covering the bottom 80% of the card, though the photo quality is nothing special. As was typical of Donruss during the ’80s, photos range from head shots to fuller-body poses to in-game action shots. Notorious for funky tinting and exposure inconsistencies, Donruss at least seemed to have most of that under control in 1990, as the majority of photos were bright if not especia
lly clear.
The 1990 card backs are a prototypical Donruss production, with the card number in a baseball in the upper lefthand corner of the horizontal design, set against a pale pink-orange background. Next to that paper horsehide is the player’s full name in bold black on top of a block of vital stats and biographical information.
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The middle third (or so) of the card back displays as many as the most recent five years’ worth of statistics, along with career totals. Each card wraps up with information about the player’s contract status and some career highlights in the bottom section.
A Rated Splash of Royal Variety
If you didn’t like the garish red borders of the 1990 Donruss baseball set, then you had plenty of other options in the market. But i
f you just wanted some variety in your card design — while retaining that special bloodbath look-and-feel — then Donruss had you covered among their expansive 716-card offering.
As had been the case for each of their regular-issue sets since 1982, Donruss allocated the first 26 slots of their checklist to the Diamond Kings, special cards depicting one superstar from each team as rendered by Hall of Fame artist Dick Perez.
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Well, “superstar” might be a bit strong, as Bo Jackson and John Smoltz were joined by such luminaries as Chris Bosio, Bryn Smith, and Kelly Gruber. At
the time, Donruss tried to cycle through a different DK for each team each season, and the pickings were growing slim after eight previous incarnations.
The Diamond King brand also made an appearance on card #27, the DK checklist, and card #665 of Nolan Ryan, the “King of Kings.” The Ryan Express was also featured on a 5000k commemorative card, #659.
Cards numbered 28-47 were dedicated to the Rated Rookies, another beloved Donruss device that in 1990 yielded first cards of Robin Ventura, Sandy Alomar, Jr., and Juan Gonzalez, as well as lesser lights
such as Pat Combs and Mike Fetters.
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Taking a page from Topps’ playbook, Donruss featured separate All-Star cards for 10 AL and 10 NL standouts, scattered among the last 80 or so numbers in the set. Also like their older baseball-card brethren, Donruss dedicated seven cards to checklisting the set’s other cards, seeding them on the 100s — card #s 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, and 700.
Finally, card 588 showed collectors what a completed Carl Yas
trzemski puzzle would look like, and the set wrapped with a Bart Giamatti memorial card at #716.
A Yaz Puzzle? How’d You Get That?
That Yaz puzzle could be
collected three pieces at a time, courtesy of a “puzzle card” inserted into every wax pack of 1990 Donruss cards. Those packs sold for 50 cents each and contained 16 cards in addition to the thick hunks of Yaz. You needed 63 total pieces to complete the puzzle (21 puzzle cards), so each 36-pack box would presumably have gotten you there with cardboard to spare.
If you wanted more red bang for your buck, you could have opted for the 37-card cello packs, which also delivered two blocks of Y
az puzzle pieces, for 99 cents a pop. They came 24 packs to a box.
Stepping up the volume a bit more were the 48-card, three-Yaz rack packs, loaded 72 to a case.
Finally, Donruss offered up a whopping 78-card blister pack, which came in cases of 48.
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Of course, if you wanted to skip the hassle of building your collection piece-by-piece, you could have opted for a factory set, which came with all 716 card