1998 Donruss Crusade Baseball Cards

1998 Leaf Rookies and Stars Crusade Baseball Cards

The 1998 Donruss Crusade set is likely one of the most talked about, collected and sought after sets of the 1990s. This set features high gloss, refractor-like, etched chrome technology. If you’ve seen these in person, you know exactly how breathtaking they really are. The design alone is simply beautiful. The lions in the background really do the trick here. Like most collectors, I love and highly respect the detail that went into this release. The significance about this set is that it doesn’t feature any gimmicky sticker autos, no game used memorabilia from the over saturated current market, no dual cut fill in the blank, no jersey auto rookie #d to 10 business. This set is flat out beauty by design, nothing else. I highly respect this type of thing because it’s true to the hobby. No b.s., just a raw flawless design.

As you can see here, there are three colors. From left to right, each progressively rarer than the next. The Green is serial numbered to 250, the Purple to 100 and the Red to 25. This stuff isn’t cheap and if your guy is anyone even halfway decent, expect to shell out some serious dough on these guys, particularly the Red. I wanted to at least have a rainbow of someone so I chose Travis Lee because he was relatively inexpensive. Well, that and I came across his Red a few months back and figured the battle was half over at that point so I decided to finish the run. This is just an example of what a Crusade rainbow looks like. As I stated before, these cards are absolutely magnificent in design. To really appreciate this release. You really must see these in person.

Statistics:

This product was released within various Leaf and Donruss products from 1998. Odds of pulling these are unknown but considered a tough pull still to this day. The Purple holds a 2.5x multiplier to the Green and the Red is too scarce to price due to its incredibly low print run of just 25 copies. If you are in the market for these cards, the Reds are obviously the most sought after. I know guys that have spent years looking for their players Red parallel. I’m one of them. If you are looking for them, there are well over 25 other collectors out there that are too and I can assure you that when one hits the market, expect to be bidding against the most relentless of collectors. Good luck!

You’ll notice that the Red is missing its serial number. From what I know, this was a printing error and could have some impact on value depending on player. To my knowledge, only some of the Crusades are missing the serial numbers.

To view the current eBay auctions for 1998 Donruss Crusades, click here.