THEY'RE BACK!!!!!!11

Well, kinda sorta at least.

Donruss has squeezed its way back into the baseball card market by producing a baseball draft pick set. 2007 Elite Extra Edition will focus on baseball draft picks, but will also include basketball draft picks as well as other athletes, coaches and celebrities. Ok, so I cut and pasted most of that description from their press release, but so did Beckett and I guess Donruss doesn't mind me advertising their stuff. Hey, Donruss is back!

Checking the sell sheet linked on Beckett shows Donruss plans to have the set hit shelves just in time for Christmas in late December. SRP is $5 per pack, 20 packs a box with 4 autos/relics, 3 inserts and 1 parallel per box. The first 20 draft picks have autograph cards in the set, (including Jason Heyward, yeah!) plus there are autographed patch cards of some of the top picks, plus Burt Reynolds (yaaay!) Steve Spurrier (boooo!) and several other coaches and celebrities. The commons, rookies, autos, inserts and parallel descriptions on the sell sheet are confusing the heck out of me, so check 'em out for yourself. (warning - .pdf file)

This is very, very good news. My guess is that this product flies off the shelves and forces MLB to reconsider a license for Donruss. Do they have a basketball license? Maybe this is a way for them to break into that market as well. It's a pretty good year to sneak basketball picks into a set, even considering Oden's misfortune. At any rate, I'm fairly certain prospectors who bust box after box of Bowman Chrome for the autos will go insane over this set. Yeah, the purists won't like football coaches and celebrities in their baseball draft pick set, but at 4 hits a box they'll get over it. I don't normally go for these kinds of sets and I still might try to snag a few packs before the price goes up just to support Donruss in their comeback. Let's all cross our fingers and hope for a 2008 Donruss baseball set, complete with '06 and '07 "sets that never were" inserts. Competition is a good thing.