In an era where sports card brands come and go, Donruss Elite is a name that football collectors can trust. Given life as an insert set over 15 years ago, 2007 marks Elite's ninth year as a stand-alone brand. Its Throwback Threads jersey cards and Passing the Torch autographed cards are among the hobby's most recognizable inserts.
Every hobby box of 2007 Donruss Elite should contain two rookies numbered to 599, two memorabilia or autographed cards and eight inserts or parallels on average. Boxes hold 20 packs of five cards each, with a suggested retail price of $5 per pack.
Base Cards
The design of Elite's base cards is reminiscent of years past but still offers a bit of a new twist. Foil board provides a shiny background of grey and silver stripes for an action photo of each player, with the team and player name and brand logo all at the bottom. The stripe pattern is a little different, but it grew on me as I took a look at more cards.
An even hundred of the NFL's best players lead off the base set, with 100 2007 NFL rookies numbered to 599 making up the second half. Elite has historically kept the numbering the same for all first-year players instead of putting them in tiers like many other brands, but with such a large set, the chances of pulling any specific rookie is only about two percent per box.
Several popular parallels return for 2007. Aspirations are die-cut to match the stripe pattern and numbered to 100 minus the player's jersey number. Status cards are also die-cut and numbered to the player's jersey number, along with a Gold version numbered to 24 and two low-numbered autographed variations.
Donruss Playoff provided a hobby box for About.com to review, and it contained 88 of the 100 veterans, two rookies (Amobi Okoye and David Clowney) and an Aspirations parallel of rookie running back Lorenzo Booker numbered to 72.
Insert Cards
Collectors can expect to find one of Elite's many regular insert cards in every two or three packs. They have an especially nice look and feel in 2007, as most are printed on slightly thicker card stock than the base cards and different colors of foil are incorporated into the designs.
Some of the insert sets celebrate a single NFL star, including Zoning Commission, Chain Reaction and Elite Series. But Elite's most unique inserts find a way to link multiple players in different ways.
Passing the Torch and Back to the Future pair up retired stars with up-and-comers who play for the same franchise. College Ties matches up a veteran and a rookie who are products of the same college football program. And Elite Teams goes a step further by focusing on three key players from a single NFL team.
All of the sets have three different colors with numbering ranging from 1000 down to 200 copies. One thing that may confuse some collectors is that the colors aren't consistent between inserts - Gold is the most common color in some sets and the rarest in others. One also wonders if so many variations of each card are necessary, as there isn't much difference between a card numbered to 400 and another numbered to 200 in today's hobby.
My review box came through with a total of nine inserts: two each from Elite Teams, Back to the Future and Zoning Commission and one each from Elite Series, Passing the Torch and Chain Reaction.
Autographed Cards
Some of the rookies featured in the base set signed cards for the Turn of the Century Rookies Signatures partial parallel, with all cards limited to 100 copies or less. All of the other autographed cards in Elite are parallels to insert sets mentioned in the previous section.
Passing the Torch Autographs are highly anticipated each season, and they return in 2007 with 20 single and 10 dual autographs, all numbered to 99 or less. College Ties Autographs and Throwback Threads follow the same blueprint but are tougher to pull, numbered to 50 or less and 10 or less respectively. Finally, Elite Series Signatures cards live up to their name with print runs of 10 or less each.
About.com's sample box contained no autographed cards.
Memorabilia Cards
Throwback Threads has become one of the best places to find jersey cards of legendary names from the NFL's past, and that's true again this season. Joe Namath, Dick Butkus, Barry Sanders and Jim Brown are just a few of the famous players whose game-worn gear is up for grabs in 2007. There are some current players thrown into the mix as well, which doesn't really seem to fit the theme except on the dual jersey cards that put the past and present together.
All of Elite's remaining insert sets except Passing the Torch have game-worn jersey variations numbered to no more than 299 copies. In classic Donruss Playoff fashion, they also all have Prime swatch variations (multi-colored jersey pieces, often from a jersey patch) numbered to a maximum of 50.
As expected, I uncovered two jersey cards in my review box: a Zoning Commission Jerseys Michael Vick numbered to 175 and a College Ties Jerseys A.J. Hawk with a nice two-color swatch that appears to have come from the nameplate of one of his Ohio State jerseys.
