If Leaf Rookies and Stars Longevity Football sounds familiar, there's a good reason. Leaf Rookies and Stars Football released earlier in the 2006 football card season, and Longevity was the name of its main parallel set. Though the base set checklist is the same and the cards look identical to the Rookies and Stars parallels, this is a different product.
Confused? This review should help straighten everything out. Donruss Playoff has been producing this set for several years, and the 2006 edition looks like its strongest yet.
Boxes of Leaf Rookies and Stars Longevity Football contain 10 packs of five cards each.
Common Cards
The base set begins with 100 common cards of current NFL players. Printed on mirror foil board, the fronts have a stripe-heavy design that's also incorporated on the backs. The Rookies and Stars Longevity logo is in gold foil in the upper left corner.
While the design hasn't changed much over the past few years, the commons do look better on foil than their regular Rookies and Stars counterparts. My review box turned up 42 of the 100 commons with no duplicates.
The commons have three levels of parallels: Ruby (numbered to 249), Sapphire (numbered to 129) and Emerald (numbered to 29). My box held a Ruby Ronnie Brown - easy to spot because the background and logo are red foil - numbered 164/249.
Rookie Cards
Rookie cards make up the remainder of the base set, with 100 regular rookies numbered to 999, 50 SP rookies numbered to 599 or less, 20 Material Rookies with a jersey swatch and 11 Signature Material Rookies with an autograph and a jersey swatch. The regular and SP rookies have the same Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald parallels as the commons. And all of the non-signed rookies have autographed parallels, so hypothetically it's possible to pull a signature from any of the 181 rookies included in the set.
The packaging promises four rookies and one rookie parallel on average, and my sample box delivered even more than that: four regular rookies, one SP rookie (Tamba Hali), a Ruby rookie parallel (Stephen Tulloch 053/199) and a Sapphire SP rookie parallel (Bruce Gradkowski 48/99). I also pulled a Material Rookie Signature Ruby parallel of Michael Robinson - which features an autograph sticker and an event-worn jersey swatch - numbered 50/50.
Autographed and Memorabilia Cards
Longevity doesn't have any autographed or memorabilia insert sets; instead, the commons all have a jersey parallel and the rookies, as noted above, all have signed parallels. I found none in my box, as the Robinson autographed jersey parallel fulfilled the stated one autograph or memorabilia card per box.
The Last Word
Leaf Rookies and Stars Longevity has always been a brand lacking its own identity, which is understandable under the circumstances. Donruss Playoff finally did something to help the 2006 version, dropping the number of packs per box - and the price of a box, which should run you $50 or less - and streamlining the contents. The result is a good-looking product with a numbered rookie or parallel in almost every pack but less memorabilia and autograph hits than its regular counterpart.
That makes the choice between the two largely one of personal preference, which is always a good thing. It's hard to rate a spin-off product any higher than this, but for the first time, Leaf Rookies and Stars Longevity has found its own niche in Donruss Playoff's lineup of football brands.