Donruss' 1 of 1's

BTFNDGUY

I recently returned to collecting and although I primarily am interested in Vintage cards I was a bit intrigued by the 2004 Donruss 1 of 1 cards signed by Greg Maddux and thus bought one on Ebay. Following that purchase I noticed other "1 of 1's" for auction which looked just like mine. Obviously I am missing something. What is up with multiple 1 of 1's? Thanks. Forgive me if this has been previously discussed.

MrRookie

Donruss made about 55 different 1/1s for almost all players in the 2004 Diamond Kings set. There are 1/1s that are just auto, auto/bat. auto/jersey, auto/jersey/jersey, auto/bat/bat, auto/bat/jersey, just base card, bat, jersey, bat/bat, bat/jersey, jersey/jersey...then ones of him in CHC uni, ones of him in ATL uni...then ones with silver border, ones with copper border, ones with gold border, ones with platinum border, ones with blue border, etc. etc. etc. - some people call them true 1/1s, some people don't - who knows.

nojo

I'm assuming that you are talking about 2004 Diamond Kings. The gimmick with this release was that they included 3 1/1 cards in every 32 box master case. To create these 1/1s, they took the same card, for instance a Greg Maddux bat/jersey combo card, and created a 1/1 version of that for each kind of parallel in the set. Since Diamond Kings includes a ton of parallels, you therefore get a ton of 1/1s. They do this for every kind of Maddux card in the set, so there's 1/1 versions that have just an auto, 1/1s that have bat/jersey, 1/1s that have bat/jersey/autos, 1/1s that have dual bats, etc.

Nope, I'm not too pleased bout it. It cheapens the aura of the 1/1 if there are 20 cards that are just like it sans a little foil or a different color border.