90's Insert card of the Month

I am going to start a new feature on the blog that I'll post once a month, starting with today's inaugural post for May. This feature is going to pay homage to an insert card from the 1990's, the decade the insert chase card exploded in popularity and helped to establish today's current card hobby. As the feature chugs along, I may dip into the late 80's for examples, since Fleer was inserting cards into its rack and cello packs in the same manner as inserts from the 90's. All the cards featured will be from my personal collection, being a teenager for most of the decade, I collected heavily during this time and have boxes of insert cards.

Each month I'll pick a different card and take a look at the player featured and the insert or insert sets importance at the time of issue. Most of the cards I'll feature have little value and many are cards I would still rather not have in my collection. For many, they are examples of the excess and one upmanship between the card companies that dominated the hobby, but I thought this would be a fun exercise to look back at cards that have been overlooked or forgotten in the last decade or two.

The card for May is a 1992 Donruss Diamond Kings Cal Ripken Jr, DK5. I pulled this card from foil packs in 1992 and this card was the cornerstone of my collection growing up. For the first time since its introduction in 1982 Donruss took the very popular Diamond Kings subset, which featured paintings of popular major league players by Dick Perez, out of the main set and inserted them into its packs. Cards 1-13 were inserted in Donruss Series One and 14-26 were inserted in Series Two packs.

I remember these cards creating quite a stir among collectors upon their release. Donruss used a simplistic design that really makes the painting the main focal point. Add some gold foil stamping and random insertion in packs and you had a early 1990's insert card that collectors went gaga over. I bought a lot of 1992 Donruss hoping to pull these cards and the ultra rare Donruss Elite. I did pull another Diamond King, DK11 Jeff Bagwell. This set helped to establish the practice by card companies to included multiple different insert sets in its base release. These cards were added incentive for collectors and helped to drive a product with their inflated value as collectors jumped from one insert set to the next. Today these cards can be found on ebay for less than one dollar and can be a nice addition for a player collector.