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The 2021 Donruss Baseball variations come in many forms. Some have different photos. Others use nicknames for the player or their city. And some squish letters together a little differently on the back.
Between the main base set and the Retro 1987 subset, there are 38 total variations in 2021 Donruss Baseball. Although exact odds haven’t been announced, they don’t appear to be very hard to pull.
Variations also have a full range of parallels like the base cards:
Career Stat Line
Season Stat Line
Blue Holo
Independence Day
Liberty
Orange Holo
Pink Holo
Purple Holo
Red Holo
Red – /2021
One Hundred – /100
On Fire – /75
Presidential Collection – /50
Mask Emoji – /19
Artist Proof – /10
Press Proof – /5
Number 1 – 1/1
Printing Plates – 1/1
How to Spot 2021 Donruss Baseball Variations
For the most part, the variations aren’t difficult to identify. Some may not jump out right away, like the nickname cards and those that play with the city name. Still, once you see it, there’s no question.
Photo variations are a little tougher unless you have both cards next to each other. They don’t draw attention to themselves and it doesn’t look like Panini included any sort of giveaway on the back like they did with the 2020 Donruss variations.
Three 2021 Donruss Baseball variations are extremely difficult to notice and play off some obscure printing variances found in some vintage sets where the spacing comes out differently in the text. For Christian Yelich and Babe Ruth, it means words dropping to another line. For Starling Marte, the tell is how much space there is between his teams and games played for his 2020 stats.
Panini doesn’t use production codes in their products so looking to the fine print isn’t relevant with these.
2021 Donruss Baseball Variations Checklist
Here’s a quick 2021 Donruss Baseball variations checklist so you can see them all at a glance. If you’re looking for a particular card, click on the links to see what’s currently available on eBay.
A collector for much of his life, Ryan focuses primarily on building sets, Montreal Expos and interesting cards. He's also got one of the most comprehensive collections of John Jaha cards in existence (not that there are a lot of them). Want to get in touch? Drop him an email.
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A slight difference in spacing on the stat line? A word on a different line? Is that what qualifies as variations now? The nicknames and city nicknames are kind of fun, but I don’t want to collect cards based on margins or spacing. I can’t imagine anyone being excited over that Marte variation.
Just got some of the Donruss cards and figured out an easier way to tell the variations from the others. If you line up the backs of all the cards, where they are all in the same direction, the front face of the card on the variations will be upside down as compared to the others.
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A slight difference in spacing on the stat line? A word on a different line? Is that what qualifies as variations now? The nicknames and city nicknames are kind of fun, but I don’t want to collect cards based on margins or spacing. I can’t imagine anyone being excited over that Marte variation.
Just got some of the Donruss cards and figured out an easier way to tell the variations from the others. If you line up the backs of all the cards, where they are all in the same direction, the front face of the card on the variations will be upside down as compared to the others.
The February on the Ruth card is also different.
So if you have sets of the variations are they worth anything? I have alot of these so far
ERA is also errantly listed as ERR on the back of many cards
IN THE 201 DONRUSS O BASE SET OF SILVERCARDS IS THEIR SILVER CARD SUB SET OF 99 CARD S TO FIND