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Donruss is a brand of sports card produced by Playoff, Inc., and was one of the so-called "Big Three" sports card brands of the late 20th century, along with Fleer and Topps. They were most recognized for their baseball cards produced between 1981 and 2005.

Donruss baseball cards were produced continuously from 1981 to 1998, when its then-parent Pinnacle Brands filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and from 2001 to 2005, when Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association revoked the company's production license. They also produced NHL hockey cards from 1992 until 1998, and NFL football cards since 1996. Today, only the football card lines remain.

History
Donald and Russell Weiner founded the original Donruss company in 1954, combining their first names to arrive at the company name. During the 1950s and 1960s the company put out several entertainment-themed trading card sets until 1969, when General Mills acquired the brand.



Entry into the baseball card market
In the winter of 1980, on the heels of Fleer's historic court victory over Topps, Donruss rushed into production a 605-card set for the 1981 season. The first printings were riddled with errors, most of which were fixed in subsequent runs. They were also printed on flimsy card stock and there were no factory sets; rather, the cards were shipped to dealers in 100-count lots and were then collated by hand.

With an entire offseason to prepare, Donruss shipped a much improved, more polished 660-card set for 1982. The '82 offering also saw the introduction of the Diamond Kings subset, made up of oil paintings by noted sports artist Dick Perez. Another Donruss innovation for 1982 was the inclusion of jigsaw puzzle pieces with a pack of cards in place of gum. (An appeal of the 1978 Fleer v. Topps ruling in 1981 barred the two new card companies from using gum premiums; Fleer switched to team logo stickers in 1982.)

In late 1983, after moderate success, Donruss was acquired from General Mills by Finnish conglomerate Huhtamäki and was rolled into another of the company's recent acquisitions, Leaf Candy Company. The 1984 base set that followed was among the company's most successful, due to its unconventional obverse design and two bona fide rookies in Darryl Strawberry and Don Mattingly.



Increased competition and market saturation
Throughout the 1980s, the baseball card market boomed, with new collectors getting into the hobby as well as speculators hoarding cards in hopes of selling them off later for a tidy profit. Unfortunately, as the "Big Three" ramped up their production numbers, new brands like Sportflics, Score and Upper Deck crowded the marketplace.

End of an era
In the late summer of 2005, Major League Baseball created new license criteria for cardmakers in response to collectors' complaints that: 1) the market had become too fragmented and confusing; and 2) rookie cards were becoming too scarce, with diminished importance due to the race between makers to feature unknown players first. MLB chose to renew only their licenses with Topps and Upper Deck, tacitly sealing the fate of Donruss and Fleer, who had folded just weeks prior due to the fragmentation of the industry. The last baseball product shipped by the company was the third series of the Playoff-branded Prime Cuts memorabilia cards.

Today, Donruss is exclusively a football card producer. The Score brand was revived in 2005 for the flagship set, while Donruss and Leaf exist as premium brands and Playoff as a memorabilia-oriented brand.

old article
Donruss is a U.S. brand of bubble gum and trading card. Its Super Bubble is a popular brand of gum, and its line of baseball cards has been popular since its debut in 1981.

The name is a conglomeration of the first names of its founders, Donald and Russell Weiner, who founded it in 1954.

During the 1950s and 1960s the company grew, selling non-sports trading cards, before being bought by General Mills in 1969. Since the entertainment market was not stable, Donruss sought to enter the lucrative baseball card market. Riding the coattails of Fleer's victory in the courts ending Topps' monopoly on the baseball card market, Donruss secured a license in the winter of 1980 and rushed a set of baseball cards onto the market for 1981. Both the Donruss and Fleer offerings were riddled with printing errors, which caused variations for collectors when they were fixed. Complete sets of the 1981 set were exclusively distributed to dealers by TCMA of Amawalk, NY. They were not sold in their own boxes, rather, dealers received cards in stacks of one hundred and had to collate sets themselves, hence no "factory" sets.

Donruss' 1982 set was printed on heavier card stock and, given more time to market, a much smaller number of printing errors. However, even though both Donruss and Fleer printed their sets on higher quality bleached paper and with sharper photographs, Topps remained the industry leader.

During 1981 and 1982, Topps sought, successfully, to block Donruss and Fleer from selling baseball cards with bubble gum. Donruss responded by including three pieces of an 8.5" x 11" 63 piece jigsaw puzzle in its baseball card packs in place of gum starting in 1982 and ending in 1992. The Hall of Fame players featured on the puzzles are:

1982 Donruss: Babe Ruth 1983 Donruss: Ty Cobb 1983 Donruss Action All-Stars: Mickey Mantle 1984 Donruss: Duke Snider 1984 Donruss Action All-Stars: Ted Williams 1985 Donruss: Lou Gehrig 1986 Donruss: Hank Aaron 1987 Donruss: Roberto Clemente 1988 Donruss: Stan Musial 1989 Donruss: Warren Spahn 1990 Donruss: Carl Yastrzemski 1990 Leaf: Yogi Berra 1991 Donruss: Willie Stargell 1991 Leaf: Harmon Killebrew 1992 Donruss: Rod Carew

Also starting in 1982, Donruss began their very popular Diamond Kings subset. The first 26 cards (with card #27 being the checklist card) of each annual Donruss set from 1982 to 1991 featured artwork of one player from each of the 26 teams by artist Dick Perez. They started out with a policy of never honoring a player more than once, but beginning in 1987, they started honoring some players a second time in the Diamond Kings subset because by then they were clearly running out of suitable honorees. Starting in 1992, they became a separate insert set. In 1996, they began to be individually numbered out of 10,000 (thus DK sets from 1996 onward are usually more expensive than in pervious years), and in 1997, they reduced the set down to ten cards (thus, there was no longer one Diamond King for each team) and then up to twenty for the 1998 set. In addition, Donruss recgonized several "King of Kings" for extraordinary achievements. They include:

1986: Pete Rose, for his 4,192nd career hit, passing Ty Cobb's all-time record for career hits. 1990: Nolan Ryan, for reaching 5,000 career strikeouts. 1994: Dave Winfield, for reaching both 3,000 hits and 400 home runs. 1996: Cal Ripken Jr., for his 2,131st consecutive game, passing Lou Gehrig's all-time consecutive games record. 1996: Eddie Murray, for becoming only the third player to reach both 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.

Donruss was also unique during the 1980s for their card backs. Unlike Topps and Fleer, which gave complete statistics covering all that player's seasons, Donruss only included the player's last five major league seasons and in most cases did not include minor league statistics. Also, Donruss used the same back design from 1982 to 1991 (with a slight facelift starting in 1985) with the only difference being the color and the letter font for the player's full legal name. The colors used for each year are:

1982: Blue 1983: Yellow 1984: Green 1985: Cream 1986: Blue 1987: Yellow 1988: Blue 1989: Orange 1990: Red-Orange 1991: Blue (Series 1) and Green (Series 2)

Finally, Donruss was unique in how they did their factory sets, which they released from 1982 to 1992. Instead of shrinkwrapping the set box (Topps) or sealing the set box with a sticker (Fleer), Donruss sealed the cards in their factory sets in shrinkwrapped 56 card "bricks" inside the set box (1983-1991; the 1982 factory set was not sealed in anyway). The 1991 and 1992 factory sets were shrinkwrapped, however.

In 1983, Donruss was purchased by a Finnish company, who also bought candy producer Leaf Candy Company and merged the two firms. For several years in the mid-1980s, the company sold baseball cards in Canada under the Leaf name that were identical to the Donruss designs except for being bilingual. During the same time frame, Donruss reduced its production, making its cards from the mid-1980s slightly more scarce than its earlier sets.

Donruss diversified in the early 1990s into football and hockey trading cards, and briefly discontinued its baseball card line during 1999 and 2000, returning in 2001.

1990 also marked the year that Donruss began to experiment with new color variations and gloss coating (or aqueous) techniques on their line of baseball trading cards. The company printed many "Blue and White" test and "Aqueous Test" in limited quantities that were not meant to be available to the general public. Few of the cards have surfaced in the marketplace over the years, demanding very high premiums (when compared to the regular 1990 Donruss series).

The "Blue and White" test cards (like the Ozzie Smith card pictured below) are easy to spot, as they are almost an eyesore to examine. Unlike the "classic red" color of a regular 1990 Donruss card, these cards almost appear to be totally white in color.



The Aqueous Test cards appear exactly as the regular 1990 Donruss cards issued with (2) distinctions on the reverse of the card:

1) Horizontally (from upper-left to lower-right) "AQUEOUS TEST" is printed on the card in bold black ink. It can be noted that this phrase is seemingly printed in standard "MS MINCHO" font in various pixel size ranges (from 10px up to 20+px height).

2) In the upper right-hand corner of the card, there is no period after "INC" in the phrase, "1989 LEAF, INC"

Aqueous Test cards have yielded between 100x and 2000x their base Beckett Price Guide in terms of sales, making them the most sought after Donruss cards ever printed!



Donruss also produces anime related trading card games. Among them have been Dragon Ball Z, InuYasha, and Yu Yu Hakusho.

In 2002, Donruss created a set of baseball cards exclusively for the All-star game and the "Big League Challenge" the day before. Dubbed 2002 Big League Challenge Materials, the set was among the first to ever have a pack of cards containing a pre-graded card. The cards were also produced in very limited quantities to ensure value.

During the year of 2005, Donruss produced to some collectors called the greatest year by Donruss. Donruss produced beautiful cards with stunning parallels, inserts, autographs, and game used items. Donruss dominated the Beckett Baseball Awards including winning "Product of the Year" for its Playoff Absolute Memorabilia release. In 2006, Donruss was not allowed to continue to produce cards, as the Major League Baseball Players Association did not renew their license. However, Donruss continues to produce National Football League Trading cards. They have been the leading seller in that category for a number of years. They continue to be the leader in both design and content for sports trading cards.

Donruss also produced kids' favorite Bub's Daddy Bubble Gum also, available during the 1970s. The company also produced other unusual card series during the early 1970s including Odd Rods (Ed Roth inspired cartoon race cars driven by monsters - there seems to be some controversy as to whether Roth was the actual artist for the Odd Rods series or if others created the images), Baseball Super Freaks, Football Super Freaks and others.