1998 Donruss Crusades..... Question

madbull34 said:

Like someone mentioned earlier. They look way better in person. Scans or pictures do not do justice.

I'd love to add Nomo to my PC but those go for quite a bit. Not as much as the Griffeys though.

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Those Irabu scans look good but I get what you are saying. I know the Donruss prized collections are hard to appreciate with scans or pictures as well, until certain cards are in hand people really can't appreciate the beauty.

I've never agreed with the prices on the Crusades or the 96 mirror golds. I do however own a purple and green crusade of Bagwell and a handful of other greens for various players. I think they are cool but they are by no means my favorite cards of Bagwell. I wouldn't even put them on my top ten.

What I'm curious about is....will we ever see them come back down in price? 90's cards are starting to get crazier than they did a handful of years ago. It's like they are trying to reach basketball levels(which are on their own level of stupidity in price). I guess people got bored with gu and autos to the point they'll pay more and more and more for these cards instead.

Greatest looking card you'll ever see in person. Hard to get them unless you want to shell out some real money though...I've been collecting them since '98 and only have 27 of them (including no reds)

P.S. Is that a Griffey CTA in the pic above? If so I feel dumb I didn't realize Griffey had a CTA

EricTownsend88 said:

Greatest looking card you'll ever see in person.

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Personally I'll take the 97 Finest Embossed refractors...

EricTownsend88 said:

Greatest looking card you'll ever see in person. Hard to get them unless you want to shell out some real money though...I've been collecting them since '98 and only have 27 of them (including no reds)

P.S. Is that a Griffey CTA in the pic above? If so I feel dumb I didn't realize Griffey had a CTA

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[h=2]Unreleased Cards[/h] It appears that a number of additional Crusade cards were produced by Donruss for future 1998 and '99 baseball card sets, but were never released due to the bankruptcy of Pinnacle Brands. Many of these cards were "base" Crusade cards of players who appeared in the "Call to Arms" subset, and vice versa.
Unlike the cards that were inserted into packs, all cards from the "Call to Arms" subset are sequentially-numbered. None of the cards, however, are serial-numbered.
Green, Purple and Red cards are known to exist for some players.
113 Ken Griffey, Jr. CTA
171 Craig Biggio CTA
177 Greg Maddux CTA
189 Mark McGwire
196 Mo Vaughn CTA
??? Mark Grace CTA
314 Frank Thomas

I lucked out on my red, auction ended on Christmas day a few years ago. plus Bernie not a mega star like Griffey or some others.
In hand there just awesome looking.

predatorkj said:

I've never agreed with the prices on the Crusades or the 96 mirror golds. I do however own a purple and green crusade of Bagwell and a handful of other greens for various players. I think they are cool but they are by no means my favorite cards of Bagwell. I wouldn't even put them on my top ten.

What I'm curious about is....will we ever see them come back down in price? 90's cards are starting to get crazier than they did a handful of years ago. It's like they are trying to reach basketball levels(which are on their own level of stupidity in price). I guess people got bored with gu and autos to the point they'll pay more and more and more for these cards instead.

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IDK if they will ever come back down, but the chance to ever get any of the really rare 90s stuff for reasonable prices has past IMO. There are to many buyers and not
enough cards. Which i guess is a nice change.

Let me ask this question.... if the internet, (ebay, amazon, forums, ect were more advanced in the late 90's. Would these cards still hold there mystique and value that they have now. In 98 /99 even seeing some of these cards was rare let alone owing one. I think having all those years of the unknown helped drive prices as well.

I underestimated my snipe on on an RJ Green /250 a few months back and remain Crusade-less. A Purple /100 just got listed yesterday so I shant hold back this time!

predatorkj said:

I've never agreed with the prices on the Crusades or the 96 mirror golds. I do however own a purple and green crusade of Bagwell and a handful of other greens for various players. I think they are cool but they are by no means my favorite cards of Bagwell. I wouldn't even put them on my top ten.

What I'm curious about is....will we ever see them come back down in price? 90's cards are starting to get crazier than they did a handful of years ago. It's like they are trying to reach basketball levels(which are on their own level of stupidity in price). I guess people got bored with gu and autos to the point they'll pay more and more and more for these cards instead.

Click to expand...

IDK if they will ever come back down, but the chance to ever get any of the really rare 90s stuff for reasonable prices has past IMO. There are to many buyers and not
enough cards. Which i guess is a nice change.

Let me ask this question.... if the internet, (ebay, amazon, forums, ect were more advanced in the late 90's. Would these cards still hold their mystique and value that they have now. In 98 /99 even seeing some of these cards was rare let alone owing one. I think having all those years of the unknown helped drive prices as well.

bigunitcards said:

I underestimated my snipe on on an RJ Green /250 a few months back and remain Crusade-less. A Purple /100 just got listed yesterday so I shant hold back this time!

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Good luck

This just arrived in my mailbox yesterday. I must say they truly are a beautiful cards and worth the premium. On the lookout for the /25.

I love these cards and always wanted one. It has only been within the last year that I have been able to get my first one though:

I owned the rainbow of Jose Canseco for a few years.. been moving the collection so sold them all to the same guy. I won my red on Ebay for $200 and was very excited despite the fact it was one of my biggest purchases on a single card to that point for my collection. Sold it for $1200 all by itself.. definately will miss them but I still have scans saved I can look back on.

1st4040 said:

I owned the rainbow of Jose Canseco for a few years.. been moving the collection so sold them all to the same guy. I won my red on Ebay for $200 and was very excited despite the fact it was one of my biggest purchases on a single card to that point for my collection. Sold it for $1200 all by itself.. definately will miss them but I still have scans saved I can look back on.

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Now to me 1200 is just crazy insane, no offense meant but, 1200 for a Canseco is Bonkers, unless it had and ounce of 24k gold lol. I am looking on line and Griffeyfan has like 35 of the reds listed. And no takers on many. I guess I can understand the superstars racking in huge money like Griffey, Jeter ect. And Canseco does have a following but WOW.

Another question, are the crusades with the name on top worth more than the CTA or are they all part of the same set? Meaning do players have two different crusades..

The Crusade inserts are wonderful for a few different reasons:

They look great and the refractor really pops in hand.

Solid checklist of most of the good late 90's players.

They are all serial #ed - gives you an exact idea of how many are out there. Stuff like Donruss Collections refractors, Mirror Golds and Embossed Gold Refractors have no serial so we assume the print run to be what's stated, or from data we have gathered over the years on scarcity.

With recent debacles on "low" print run cards such as the 1999 UD Exclusives Level 2 (w/no serial #), 1999 Ultimate Victory parallel 1/1s (w/no serial #), and 2006 UD F/X blues (rumored to be out of 25, then 30+ Nelson Cruzs show up on ComC) I cringe to think about what could be out there for non serial #ed issues. I know these are all isolated to Upper Deck but we've heard backdooring stories from every major manufacturer.

Owned a Chipper and some Pirates scrub at one point. Beautiful in hand for sure.

No Brewers in the checklist = Bullshine

mrdallas said:

Another question, are the crusades with the name on top worth more than the CTA or are they all part of the same set? Meaning do players have two different crusades..

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[h=1]Description[/h] 1998 Donruss Crusade is a 130-card, cross-brand, insert. The first 40 cards (Denoted below with a "D") were randomly inserted into packs of 1998 Donruss Series One as a "stealth" insert, the next 30 into 1998 Leaf ("L"), and the next 30 into 1998 Donruss Update Series ("U"). Cards 101-130 were inserted into packs of 1998 Leaf Rookies & Stars.
The fronts feature color player photos with a Medieval design theme, printed on chromium stock with a holographic foil sheen that gives it the appearance of a Finest Refractor.
There are three different versions of each card: Green (serial-numbered to 250 copies), Purple (numbered to 100), and Red (numbered to 25).
All of the "Call to Arms" (CTA) subset cards were mistakenly printed without card numbers. Corrected copies were never made.
A number of "Sample" cards are also known to exist. These cards are serial-numbered either "***/250" (green), "***/100" (purple), or "XX/25" (red). It is believed that these cards were produced for Donruss' staff and were used in-house for final approval before production.
Donruss had plans for extending the Crusade set into 1999 and beyond, however with the bankruptcy of their parent Pinnacle Brands, those plans never came to fruition. However, in the years since a number of Crusades with card numbers above 130 have surfaced. It is that many of these cards were "backdoored" after the Pinnacle Brands bankruptcy.
[h=1]Checklist[/h] 1 Tim Salmon U
2 Garret Anderson U
3 Jim Edmonds CTA L
4 Darin Erstad CTA L
5 Jason Dickson D
6 Todd Greene D
7 Roberto Alomar CTA D
8 Cal Ripken, Jr. D
9 Rafael Palmeiro CTA U
10 Brady Anderson U
11 Mike Mussina L
12 Mo Vaughn CTA D
13 Nomar Garciaparra D
14 Frank Thomas CTA U
15 Albert Belle CTA L
16 Mike Cameron D
17 Robin Ventura U
18 Manny Ramirez L
19 Jim Thome CTA L
20 Sandy Alomar, Jr. D
21 Dave Justice D
22 Matt Williams U
23 Tony Clark U
24 Bubba Trammell L
25 Justin Thompson D
26 Bob Higginson L
27 Kevin Appier D
28 Paul Molitor L
29 Chuck Knoblauch CTA U
30 Todd Walker L
31 Bernie Williams U
32 Derek Jeter CTA U
33 Tino Martinez D
34 Andy Pettitte L
35 Wade Boggs CTA L
36 Hideki Irabu D
37 Jose Canseco D
38 Jason Giambi U
39 Ken Griffey, Jr. D
40 Alex Rodriguez CTA L
41 Randy Johnson L
42 Edgar Martinez D
43 Jay Buhner CTA U
44 Juan Gonzalez CTA U
45 Will Clark D
46 Ivan Rodriguez L
47 Rusty Greer D
48 Roger Clemens L
49 Carlos Delgado U
50 Shawn Green D
51 Jose Cruz, Jr. D
52 Kenny Lofton D
53 Chipper Jones D
54 Andruw Jones CTA L
55 Greg Maddux U
56 John Smoltz CTA L
57 Tom Glavine U
58 Javy Lopez L
59 Fred McGriff L
60 Mark Grace U
61 Sammy Sosa CTA U
62 Kevin Orie D
63 Barry Larkin CTA U
64 Pokey Reese L
65 Deion Sanders D
66 Andres Galarraga L
67 Larry Walker D
68 Dante Bichette CTA D
69 Neifi Perez U
70 Eric Young L
71 Todd Helton D
72 Gary Sheffield CTA U
73 Moises Alou L
74 Bobby Bonilla D
75 Kevin Brown D
76 Ben Grieve L
77 Jeff Bagwell CTA U
78 Craig Biggio D
79 Mike Piazza L
80 Raul Mondesi U
81 Hideo Nomo CTA U
82 Wilton Guerrero D
83 Rondell White CTA U
84 Vladimir Guerrero CTA U
85 Pedro Martinez D
86 Edgardo Alfonzo D
87 Todd Hundley CTA U
88 Scott Rolen D
89 Francisco Cordova D
90 Jose Guillen D
91 Jason Kendall L
92 Ray Lankford D
93 Mark McGwire CTA D
94 Matt Morris D
95 Alan Benes L
96 Brian Jordan CTA U
97 Tony Gwynn L
98 Ken Caminiti CTA L
99 Barry Bonds CTA U
100 Shawn Estes D


[h=2]Leaf Rookies & Stars Series[/h] 101 Richard Hidalgo
102 Paul Konerko
103 Miguel Tejada
104 Fernando Tatis
105 Travis Lee
106 Wes Helms
107 Rich Butler
108 Mark Kotsay
109 Eli Marrero
110 David Ortiz
111 Juan Encarnacion
112 Jaret Wright
113 Livan Hernandez
114 Ron Wright
115 Ryan Christenson
116 Eric Milton
117 Brad Fullmer
118 Karim Garcia
119 Abraham Nunez
120 Ricky Ledee
121 Carl Pavano
122 Derrek Lee
123 A.J. Hinch
124 Brian Rose
125 Bobby Estalella
126 Kevin Millwood
127 Kerry Wood
128 Sean Casey
129 Russell Branyan
130 Magglio Ordonez

I have ZERO Ripken but somehow ended up with these.....



I forgot how much I paid for the pair.....

I want the Rickey prototype