2001 Donruss Anniversary Originals BGS buy backs

Supposedly - according to hobby lore - the executive in charge of this brand at Donruss really didn't think collectors cared much about the grades. He was fine with loads of 7 and 8 slab's being used as boxtoppers. There was a lot of blowback at the time in 2001 that worthless cards were used.

These were so cheap I actually bought some Grace's to use as cup coasters on my card sorting desk.

Letch77 said:

Is there a way to view recent sales, or were you just looking at the "sold out" listings?

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Sold Out listings sorted by recently added. I don’t really trust that though. I think it only works if they are cards that COMC has not had before.

MatthewN said:

Sold Out listings sorted by recently added. I don’t really trust that though. I think it only works if they are cards that COMC has not had before.

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...or doesn't have any other listed for sale.

MatthewN said:

I saw this Puckett in the COMC sold listings. I didn't even realize this was a thing.

https://www.comc.com/Cards/Baseball...acks/19/Kirby_Puckett/13917170/Graded/BGS/8_5

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I saw that one listed there for a while on both comc and comc through ebay. I was able to acquire a lesser grade for much cheaper for my collection.
Here are the ones I have (not available, sorry):



If you look at the DK that was on comc (0001013217) and mine (0001013169) and the two '85s (0000988706 & 0000988673), you'll see the serial numbers are pretty close together for slabs of the same card. Maybe each card was submitted in a batch and are sequentially serial numbered? I have found that you are almost/more as likely to find these searching for say "1985 donruss puckett bgs" and looking at the flips in the pics as searching "puckett donruss anniversary originals".

I dug into the Beckett pop report for Puckett...

1985 Donruss seems to be #s 0000988649 through 0000988725 There is a block of 87 Cone before and 85 Clemens after with a couple random cards in the gaps between the blocks.

1986 Donruss (which I've never seen) seems to go 0000982375 through 0000982581 There was a block of 89 Smoltz before and a lot of random cards after.

1987 Donruss seems to be 0001006137 through 0001006543 Preceded by 87 Winfield and followed by 87 Yount.

1987 Donruss DK seems to be 0001013105 through 0001013308 It was preceded by 87 R. Henderson and followed by a short run of 89 Griffey then 98 Ordonez.

I don't believe there are any other Pucketts because of the small pops of the other Donruss Pucketts. You could probably figure out any player by looking at the pop report, finding Donruss cards in large populations, and looking to see if the serial numbers are more or less consecutive. The cards seem to have been graded around April 2001.

Edit to add:
a google image search turned this up which was on ebay at some point apparently

As noted earlier this thread, I used to not even know this was a thing. Then I pretty much forgot it was a thing, but my eBay search for "Puckett buyback" brought this up in an e-mail recently or I would've missed it. Still not sure what I really think of these, but, well, the price was fine, and it's a unique item in terms of buyback history I guess.

I was not aware of these, but then there is no reason I would have been, unless i stumbled upon an autographed version.

Buybacks are some of the most poorly executed items from a collector stand point, ever introduced into the hobby. For the card makers, these were just a cheap was to build some hype and value for pack busters. If they had given half a ****, they would have marked the cards somehow to begin with and checklist them so collectors know what is out there available. Yet, that opens another debate that people side up against each other on. When you are talking mass produced junk era, I am not sure anyone could possibly care about stamps or markings, but when you start buying up older vintage Topps cards of stars and rookies (Clemente, Mantle, Aaron, Mays, etc) , then people can get sensitive about marking the cards, such as how Topps has done with the foil stamps in recent years.

Pretty sure Topps was the first when they added buybacks to their 1991 series as a way to celebrate the 40th Anniversary, but the cards were just randomly inserted and were no different than if you bought your own "Buyback". No serial numbers, foil stamping, embossing, etc. A real swing and a miss by Topps. Plus, apparently they were next to impossible to pull anyway. I believe I read where there were something like 2 full sets of the entire 40 year run inserted into packs? No way to prove it, so a few hundred random cards of significant age or subject and a boatload of 1986-90 cards and we'd never know the difference.

The manufacturers got smarter and started to mark the cards in different ways, which was nice. Still, there was no checklist of who was packed out, how many, etc. Another swing and a miss! I remember the embossed cards. I don't recall the year, but those are almost certainly going to be lost in history to anyone other than the sharpest of eyes. Those were hard to see when they were new, and they didn't look like any of the other cards in the pack! Of all the markings used for buybacks that I have seen, embossing was definitely the worst.

I am glad that most buybacks are clearly marked now, and in some cases, even serialized. That is quite helpful to determine how many might be available. With the Topps rediscover stuff, you still had no idea, other than a foil coloring system of various vague scarcities. Better bid high when one hits the market, lest you never see another again...only to overpay and see dozens more hit ebay in the following weeks. Ah, good times. Strike 3!

Still, with all that, I do enjoy a good buyback. I have only ever really seriously gone after Garvey cards and a few assorted Dodgers or a rare card that caught my eye though. They are worth very little beyond what a regular card of the same type would cost, to me at least.