Breakin' Wax:2021 Diamond Kings Baseball Four Hanger Boxes

 Playing the game of toggle on the blogs and taking my mini vacation has led me to being way behind on posts.

Whether those posts are trades, pickups or even box breaks, I am behind.

So let's catch up on a few of those starting today with four hanger boxes of 2021 Diamond Kings baseball.

We all know how hard it is to find retail now-a-days and how if any of us who actually buy retail to open it find any, we buy it. That was the case with the Diamond Kings for me. I am not actually an overly huge fan of the product, but it was sitting there and everyone says hangers are better than blasters so I grabbed em.

Each hanger box of 2021 Donruss Diamond Kings comes with 20 cards per hanger box. The boxes come with an exclusive red border parallel per hanger and each hanger if I remember correctly was $11 each.

The base set for Diamond Kings comes with 170 with a mix of 

Legends of the game

Veterans and Short Prints (Cal Ripken)

along with future stars.

And of course some actual Diamond Kings. These definitely are not the ones from the 90's.

There are not a lot of parallels in Diamond Kings, but a few. Each one of my Hangers came with an Artist Proof and Red Border.

Here are the overall parallels,

ARTIST PROOF PARALLELS: AP Blue, AP Gold /49, Litho Proof /25, AP Masterpiece 1/1.
FRAMED PARALLELS: Blue, Gray, Plum, Red, Wood FOTL /15, Black Masterpiece 1/1, Litho Proof and Black Masterpiece 1/1.

This is an Artist Proof which is just a stamped Artist Proof on the card.

Red Bordered.

There are a handful of inserts in Diamond Kings and I found a variety of them in each hanger.

Gallery Of Stars (solid names)

Legacy Lithographs (once again, not bad names)

Aficionado

Artists Palette (my favorite design of the inserts)

And I was hoping for a huge memorabilia hit or an autograph of a superstar in those four boxes,

 

But one of that happened. At least I pulled a hit and it does have a stripe in the relic. Card also looks nice that's always an extra bonus.

That does it for four hangers worth of Diamond Kings. There's not a lot of big finds there but it was fun being able to open some.

Let me hear your thoughts on the break and the product below in comments!

Went Fishing With Grady

In my latest box of goods from Sport Card Collectors reader Grady, along with never ending shiny cards and inserts, he hit up a few of my PC's as well. I will be breaking those down by player as I go. Today I am showcasing the face of baseball, no not you Mookie Betts you are great and all, but you are no Mike Trout.

I have been slowly adding more and more Mike's to my collection over the past few months and have totaled 70 different including these.

Trout and some guy who gets hurt every year on the same card.

Full concentration on this catch. I really like the GQ design on this one along with the photo.

No logos, no problem. Diamond Kings design with the reddish jersey and green background gives it a great look and a Christmas feel which I am great with.

And the final add was this Aficionado from Diamond Kings.

At some point on here I will be updating players like Mike and how many of their cards I have. Of course reaching round numbers will lead to future blog posts of guys like Mahomes, Jackson and Trout which are my newest PC's. I am strongly considering adding Russell Wilson in there as well because he has strong religion and is an incredibly talented, yet underrated QB.

More of these posts to come, some of which have tons of cards to show off while others are smaller like today's.

Gallery Of Greats

In the finale of my Grady M mail day, I wanted to do a quick gallery and example of some positives Panini has in their baseball products.

Last time we talked Panini baseball I was complaining about the 2018 Donruss product and it's overuse of name variations. Today I am praising them for their great job with 2018 Diamond Kings insert set Gallery Of Stars.

Yes, the logo's are still missing, but when it comes to capturing the magic that these cards brought in the 90's, Panini hit a home run. These look just like the original-once again minus the logos-but design and player wise spot on.

Just take a look for yourself.

 

Just picture these with logos....are you in a happy place? I know I am.

I think a lot of peoples issues with Panini is the lack of licensing and not lack of effort. If you can overcome that and the Donruss name variations, Panini puts out a solid line of baseball products and I think deserved a shot at sharing, yes sharing, the MLB license. But, it appears we won't be seeing that too soon sadly so will have to see more of this instead. I hate exclusive licensing. At least the players in Panini baseball products are MLBPA licensed.

How do you feel about Panini baseball products? You think they deserved a shot at sharing the MLB licensing?

**by the way, a big thank you goes out to Grady M for yet another solid insert/pc loving filled mail day. I appreciate everything you send my way. Hopefully I can get you a return soon buddy**

#9:Griffey Is A Diamond King

Today is card #9 in my Top 10 countdown trade adds from my big trade with Project Pedro blog.

Today's card is simply a numbered to 10,000 Diamond King insert. I really like the design and even the numbering on these. I know people think 10,000 is a bit crazy to have something numbered to, but back 10 years ago it actually meant something. 20 years ago it REALLY meant something. If a card was numbered to that today, well, it would probably be worth pennies.

These Diamond Kings on the other hand have held their value over the years. Glad to have another Griffey off my want list.