By 1983, Donruss had gotten over its initial growing pains after entering the mainstream baseball card market two years earlier. It was time to experiment, and the Memphis, Tennessee-based card company came out with two different sets to supplement its 1983 main set.
Donruss Action All-Stars and Hall of Fame Heroes sets are now 40 years old and remain distinctive and inexpensive to complete. The first set showcased the current stars of the game, while the latter was a tribute to baseball’s greats.
Donruss Action All-Stars
The Action All-Stars began a four-year run in 1983, with Donruss using an oversized format to showcase the 60-card set. The cards had a horizontal format and measured 5 inches wide by 3½ inches deep. The set featured 59 players and a checklist (card No. 60).
Packs cost 30 cents apiece and had six cards to a pack. Boxes contained 38 packs, and, in a note to retailers, “plus two free packs for extra profits.” Apparently, 60 cents went a long way in 1983.
The cards featured an oversized mug shot of the player on the left-hand side of the card, with an inset action shot on the right. The Donruss logo and “’83” are prominently featured in the upper left-hand corner of the card front.
They are framed by a maroon, or some might say, a deep red border. The player’s name and position are situated under the inset photograph.
Because of their size, the card backs allowed for more complete statistics for each player. The design, also horizontal, includes extra stats. For position players, that meant stats such as total bases, sacrifice flies, stolen bases, hit by pitches, slugging percentage and fielding information was included. For pitchers, games started and completed, runs and earned runs allowed and fielding statistics were part of the card backs.
For a game that revels in numbers and statistics, these cards were a boon for collectors.
The card backs also featured biographical information and some fun facts, along with how the player was acquired.
The typography is a little unsettling on the left-hand side, as Donruss chose a ragged center format that leaves a lot of unused space. The biography to the right is left-justified type and looks much cleaner.
The packs also contained one card, which had three pieces of a Mickey Mantle puzzle labeled a Hall of Fame Diamond King. The Mantle puzzle required 63 pieces to complete it.
The Donruss flagship set, by the way, used a puzzle of Ty Cobb.
There is only one variation in the set. The back of Reggie Jackson’s card (No. 3) has two different backs. One is traditional, but the variation has the shaded red box covering the 1981, 1982 and years and career total lines of his statistics box.
The set is filled with Hall of Famers, including Jackson, Johnny Bench, Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken Jr., George Brett, Steve Carlton, Rickey Henderson, Andre Dawson, Dave Winfield, Phil Niekro, Robin Yount, Carl Yastrzemski, Bruce Sutter, Carlton Fisk, Gaylord Perry, Rollie Fingers, Rod Carew, Eddie Murray, Gary Carter and Mike Schmidt.
Other stars featured Pete Rose, Dave Concepcion, Keith Hernandez, Kent Hrbek, Greg Luzinski, Jack Clark, Bill Madlock, Fernando Valenzuela, Fred Lynn, Hal McRae, Willie Wilson and Ron Guidry.
To give retailers a taste of the set, Donruss also issued a promo sheet that contained four cards in a 10-inch by 7-inch format. The players featured were Rose, Winfield, Mookie Wilson and Tim Lollar.
Hall of Fame Heroes
The Hall of Fame Heroes set, as the name suggests, features those players enshrined in Cooperstown.
The cards highlighted the artwork of Dick Perez, who was the mastermind behind the Donruss Diamond Kings subsets that were introduced in 1982.
There are 44 cards in the set, with 43 of them featuring Perez’s work. The remaining card was a checklist. The cards measured 2½ inches by 3½ inches.
There were 36 packs to a box and eight cards to a pack. In addition, a card featuring three puzzle cards of Mantle (like in the Action All-Stars set) was included in every wax pack.
The design is dominated by Perez’s breathtaking artwork on the card front, which feature the player set against a backdrop of clouds. The Donruss logo is set at the top left-hand corner of the card, with “Hall of Fame Heroes” bannered across the top. The player’s name is placed beneath the portrait at the bottom of the card.
The card back design is relatively plain, with a long biographical sketch describing the player’s attributes and career highlights. A nice touch might have been the inclusion of — or a more prominent display — of the year the player was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The set is brimming with big names, like Mantle, Cobb, Hank Aaron, Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Honus Wagner, Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente. Curiously, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Willie Mays are not included among the stars. That could have been due to contractual obligations.
Like the Action All-Star set, the Hall of Fame Heroes set also had a promo sheet. This measured 5 inches by 7 inches and featured four players — Cobb, Robinson, Yogi Berra and Bob Feller.
