The Beckett Blog

Donruss Gridiron Gear celebrates its fifth birthday this year by staying true to its four-year-deep roots and providing a product that is steeped in rookies, rookie memorabilia and rookie autographs.

It’s a product that has struggled at times to find a definitive identity in a football market packed with options, but with a bold base design that provides a distinct departure from the company’s foil-board fallback, and a clever new-look NFL Gridiron Signatures, the 2009 edition should find its share of devotees when it releases next week.

As is to be expected with most Panini America products, Gridiron Gear contains a bevy of parallel cards in a seeming rainbow array of colors (we pulled three different varieties of X parallels); and, yes, stickers appear to be the prevailing form of autograph in the set.

But the staid state of stickering is offset by the uniqueness of the set’s new-look NFL Gridiron Signatures autographs. This year, the insert set features rookie autographs on a sizable piece of football field and the overall effect is endearing.

In the interest of full disclosure, this particular review box was hot (there are three hot boxes per 16-box case) and as such included six autograph/memorabilia hits and a slew of other inserts; two additional boxes per case should deliver four autograph/memorabilia hits.

The fact that this particular hot box included four memorabilia cards (a Mark Sanchez numbered to 250, a Matthew Stafford numbered to 100 and two numbered to 50), two autographs (a Josh Freeman NFL Gridiron Signatures numbered to 45 and a Kenny McKinley Rookie Card numbered to 100), four RCs and four other inserts makes it a high-value proposition.

Obviously, not every box will be so loaded, but even the average one (11 per case) – with three autograph/memorabilia cards, three Rookie Cards and seven other inserts or parallels – should deliver enough to keep 2009 new-card enthusiasts going for a little while anyway.

– Tracy Hackler