Donruss has become a the flagship brand of Panini’s racing line. The 2021 set marks the 5th consecutive year of racing cards for the brand, and they once again bring the heat with a variety of base, inserts, parallels, and hits to appeal to collectors.
The Breakdown
The Retro 1988 design is one of my favorite parts of the set.
The 200 card base set provides a great mix of drivers and multiple levels of racing as well as a host of retired legends. The set is also comprised of several subsets which provide an element of variety. Cards 1-25 are the Race Kings subset, and 26-37 are Rated Rookies. There are also 13 cards featuring cars, and about 80 cards utilizing the 1988 Donruss design. These subsets in are in addition to the base design used on cards 45-119. Basically, the base set has a little for everyone!
There are 15 different parallels with varying levels of scarcity, and six of those are retail exclusives.
Another one of my favorite aspects of the Donruss release is the inserts. In years past, I referred to the Donruss inserts as their version of Chronicles. Well, it 2020, NASCAR got their own version of Chronicles, however my analogy still holds water as several of the insert sets have their origins in other stand alone releases.
The insert sets are as follows: Action Packed, Aero Package, Classics, Dominators, Elite Series, Retro Series, and Contenders. This year, three insert sets are inserted in a much more limited ratio. Blank Slate, Sketchworks, and Water Colors are super rare and highly sought after. I recommend keeping an eye out on eBay and Sportlots for these three because there may be sellers who don’t realize how rare they are and price them at the same levels as the standard inserts. In addition, Optic parallels serve as an insert card in the racing line and fall one per hobby pack.
The full run of insert cards also have parallels available ranging from the unnumbered checkers line to Diamond 1/1s.
The final aspect I want to cover is the hits!
Hobby boxes promise 1 autograph and 2 relics on average, and NASCAR relics are some of the most interesting items of any sport. The majority of the Donruss relics are fire suit pieces or race used tire chunks. The autograph checklist is super deep and consists of both young, up and coming drivers, and retired legends. In addition, Panini surprised us with 5th Anniversary buy back autos which are randomly inserted and serve as a “bonus” hit! I was fortunate to hit a buyback auto in both my hobby boxes.
Box Break
Check out the video of me opening one of my hobby packs.
I ended up with 4 autos in my two boxes, and since I didn’t have any of them in my PC, I added them all to my binder. I took the relics into the shop and added them to my auto relic boxes.
I love the optic set, and I was able to track down a huge lot of Optic base and holos for a great price which gave me plenty of duplicates to sell at the shop and on Sportlots. The insert sets continue to be one of my favorite parts, but at this point I’ll need to pick up some large lots if I want to build the master set.
Wrapping it Up
In my opinion, this product provides a great value. You get a wide variety of base cards, parallels, inserts, and hits for roughly $75. In the 2021 sports card environment, that’s a ton of content for the price. I’d recommend checking it out if you are a racing fan or if you want to expand your collecting experience to a new sport!
Checklist
The Checklist can be found here on TCDB!
Here is a photo of all the inserts.