2002 Donruss Originals, Darin Erstad

#382 Darin Erstad

Here is another Darin Erstad card that I got signed at the Kansas State baseball game last spring. Did I mention that the K-State football team in undefeated right now? Anyways, Darin is an assistant coach with the Nebraska baseball team and was nice enough to sign a few cards for me.

I guess when Topps started rolling out their Heritage releases, Donruss felt a little left out. Luckily, they came up with their Originals set and they redid most of their sets from the '80s. At least that is how I think they did it.

In 2003, I graduated college and I started started buying a few random packs at Wal-Mart. For some reason, I had no clue that Wal-Mart carried so many baseball cards when I was in college. So when I got out, there was a plethora of cards available that I had never seen before. I bought a little bit of everything and never really knew what I had until I got out of the Army and really started getting into cards again.

So, I bought one (or maybe two) packs of '02 Donruss Originals and those pack(s) are what I am basing my description of the set on. However, I do not recall seeing a card with an '81 border. I hope that there are some of those included in the set and if there are, I may have to look into getting a few of those signed.

The border for this card is obviously from the 1988 Donruss set. It is kind of cool seeing a modern photo and logo on a card style from the '80s. At first glance, this card looks just like a real '88. But one you compare it to an actual '88 Donruss card, you can see a few discrepancies. The while border around the photo is a little thinner on this card than on the real '88 and the fonts are different between the two. The team logo may be a little bit smaller, but it is hard to tell when you only have one card to go by. Either way, it is still a good looking card.