2024 Donruss Mega Box
Donruss is back in 2024 with a 200 card base set that focuses on retired stars and prospects. The first 100 cards feature many Hall of Famers, past All-Stars and up and coming prospects. The second 100 cards showcase the Rated Prospects, the best that the Minor Leagues have to offer..
Over the past two years the players in Panini baseball products have been limited to retired players and prospects. This is due to the loss of the MLBPA license. Of course there are a couple outliers, guys who did not sign on with the MLBPA. Bobby Witt Jr is one of the bigger names that fall in this group.
Panini’s approach with Donruss this year has a Bowman-like feel about it. While this will vary based on the type of box or pack purchased, packs contain on average 8-9 cards from the first hundred and 3-4 cards from the second hundred. There are also 2 Optic (Chrome) cards per pack. The twist is, unlike Bowman, the Optic cards are parallels of the entire set and not just the prospect cards. Keeping with the Donruss tradition each pack offers anywhere between 2 and 5 additional inserts or parallels per pack.
In this post we are going to look at the Donruss Mega Box. The Mega Box contains six packs with 20 cards per pack. The Mega Box also contains the chance to get 3 different exclusive parallels. Liberty Foil, Carolina Blue Laser (#/249) and Artist Proof (#/25). The Mega Boxes also contain 2 autograph or memorabilia cards per box on average.
The base card design is nice and clean this year. The photos are sharp and the team color trim really makes the card standout. The Rated Prospects have a similar, but altered design which makes them easier to differentiate. The Rated Prospect logo is in the top left corner.
One of the first things I noticed when looking at the cards was the collation in the packs is quite odd this year. The cards are essentially in card number order out of the pack. The photo below shows the base cards pulled out of one of the packs.
When you turn the stack over the cards in this pic run numbers 43-52 in order. The Rated Prospects are similar with numbers 187-190. There was no sorting done. This is how they came out of the packs.
There are eight insert sets in 2024 Donruss. The more common ones are Action All-Stars, Bomb Squad, Milestones and Unleashed. Case hits include Whammy and Career Retrospectives.
Just like any sports card product these days, 2024 Donruss contains a bevy of parallels to chase. There are a total of 21 base parallels and 17 Optic parallels. In this Mega Box Including the base Optic, I pulled 34 parallels.
Most of the parallels are unnumbered cards. There were two that were serial numbered. Blake Mitchell Carolina Blue Laser (#072/249) and Buster Posey Action All Star Red Ice (#006/149).
Each Mega Box is said to contain 2 memorabilia or autograph cards on average. I was able to pull both an autograph and a memorabilia card in this box. The memorabilia card was a Jackson Jobe Jersey King Blue Ice Parallel. The autograph was a Jackson Merrill Rated Prospect Optic Signature Gold Velocity Prizm (#01/10)!
The Jackson Merrill Autograph is one of the biggest pulls I’ve had from a retail box in a long time.
As someone who loves Minor League Baseball, the shift in focus to prospects and retired stars is something I appreciate. It is great to see some of these prospects get more cards. With the many parallels and inserts offered, Donruss once again proves to be a fun rip.
