Welp, I finally pulled the trigger on my first set purchase of 2019. At $45 shipped, it came in $5 under my budget of $50. (I still haven't paged last year's Donruss set, so the 2" binder I bought for $8 will only count as $4 since I will easily be able to fit both sets in it.)
AND, kudos to the seller for taping some of the wax box to the top of the white box. Very cool, and I've never received a set where someone has done this before. Sweet!
The base cards look pretty nice in hand. It's a shame that there are only 3 Tigers, but I blame the current Tigers "braintrust" more than I do the good folks at Donruss. I think this may be the nicest design of the Donruss rebirth. I just wish they'd dialed down the size of whatever that is going on in the bottom right corner to match the upper left corner, but otherwise no complaints.
They've stepped up the backs this year by adding a second color. Much nicer than last year's black ink only.
The DK subset is gorgeous. One Tiger, a couple who were, and one who needs to be. Hell, they ALL NEED to be, but that's another post for another time.
I love the look of the Rated Rookies too. This would've been great for the entire set design IMO. It's a shame there are only 20 of these in the set. Seems like Donruss is missing the boat by not adding more.
Again these "throwback" cards look great too. I like that this subset features mostly up and comers, prospects, and rookies.
My only complaint with 2019 Donruss is regarding the "variations" which are boring and unnecessary. If you want to work 50 more stars into the set, which I'm on board with, I would've preferred a 50 card subset replicating the awesome 1985 Donruss Action All-Stars set.
Overall I give this set a solid B+. They look much better in hand than they did when I saw the pics on twitter months ago. I think this is the best looking Donruss set since they came back 5 years ago. And for $45 delivered I saved about two-thirds on what I've spent on last year's Donruss set (which is still not complete.....if anyone wants to help. I've got plenty of dupes.)
