Donruss baseball cards were first issued in 1981 by the Donruss Company and grew to become one of the top sports card brands alongside Topps throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. At their peak, Donruss baseball cards were among the most popular and valuable trading cards on the market. Several factors in the mid-1990s contributed to the eventual decline of Donruss baseball cards.
One major issue was overproduction and saturation of the market. In the early 1990s, the baseball card market was booming with collectors amassing huge collections and individual cards commanding high prices. Seeing the profits others were making, numerous new companies entered the baseball card industry in the early-mid 1990s. This resulted in a massive overproduction of cards with the existing companies like Donruss also increasing production substantially each year to try and gain more market share.
By 1994, the market was flooded with far more baseball cards than collectors had any demand for. Retailers were stuck with piles of unsold inventory they couldn’t move. Many collectors lost interest with so many duplicates clogging the market. With declining sales and revenues, it became untenable for many small companies to remain in business. The players’ union was concerned about all the unlicensed products bearing players’ names and statistics without compensation.
In response to the overproduction crisis, Major League Baseball entered into exclusive contracts in 1995 with only a few national baseball card manufacturers including Leaf, Upper Deck, and Fleer in addition to the long-time rightsholder Topps. Donruss and other smaller companies were shut out from any official MLB player licenses. Without being able to feature active major leaguers, Donruss baseball cards lost much of their appeal and collectibility.
Another factor was the increased dominance of the licensed sportscard market by a few big companies. In the early 1990s, Donruss was one of the “Big 3” along with Topps and Fleer. In 1995 Upper Deck gained the high-profile MLB license and quickly became the market leader with ultra-premium, higher-priced cards that focused more on memorabilia pieces. For collectors, Upper Deck cards were seen as cooler, more elite collectibles that made simple sticker baseball cards seem outdated.
Donruss attempted to stay competitive by shifting to focus more on parallels, inserts, and autographs to mimic the Ultimate Collection-style products from competitors. They struggled to gain shelf space at retail outlets that were maximizing space for the nationally-licensed brands. Distribution channels narrowed and Donruss were progressively squeezed out. By the late 1990s, Donruss had fallen far behind Topps and Upper Deck and were losing millions.
In late 1998, Donruss was acquired by publisher Phoenix Media/Communications Group, who already owned rival card manufacturer Fleer. Rather than competing brands, it made more sense financially to consolidate their card operations. The Donruss name and brand was officially retired after the 1999 season in favor of simply using the more commercially viable Fleer brand going forward for all of PMC’s baseball cards.
While occasional retro or nostalgia Donruss baseball card products have been released since by other companies who now hold the trademarks, the classic original Donruss run from 1981-1999 came to an end due to a combination of overproduction crashing the market in the mid-1990s and the inability to hold onto an official MLB player license, which proved fatal as the sportscard industry consolidated around just a handful of nationally licensed manufacturers who came to dominate distribution. This ultimately led to Donruss, one of the pioneering brands in the industry, being absorbed into another company and disappearing as an independently operating baseball card manufacturer.
