Way too many 2009 Donruss Americana packs

Through browsing a couple of trading card sites, I saw a pack I was interested in opening. It was the 2008 Donruss Americana II set. Unfortunately, after looking around the shops, I could only find the latest Donruss Americana series (2009 edition). Luckily though, I was able to buy a large number of retail packs cheaply (19 packs for about $30).

Donruss Americana is a celebrity trading card set. The 2009 edition contains 5 cards per pack and the ratio of inserts is (according to the back of a pack): Private Signings (100 cards) numbered to 500 or less; Star Material/Materials Silver Proofs/Gold Proofs (100 cards) numbered as low as 25 or less; Cinema Stars/Materials/Materials Silver Screen (24 cards) numbered as low as 25 or less; Hollywood Legends/Materials (26 cards) numbered as low as 25 or less; Co-stars Materials/Silver Screen/Golden Era (16 cards) numbered as low as 50 or less; TV Stars/Materials Small Screen (23 cards) numbered as low as 50 or less; Movie Posters/Combo/Triple/Quad Materials (65 cards) numbered to 500 or less.

The retail packs traditionally don't have has many inserts as the hobby box sets so I wasn't really expecting to pull any inserts. However, somewhat surprisingly, I pulled 3 inserts:

Jill-Michelle Melen - Proof card numbered 156 of 250 (she's a comedienne in case anyone was saying "who?");

Barry Bostwick - Proof card numbered 242 of 250 (probably best known as the Mayor from the tv show, Spin City); and

Edward G. Robinson - Hollywood Legends card numbered 779 of 1000 (a veteran of over 100 films).

Although I would've liked to get the 2008 set, I think the layout of the 2009 set is better. The colour of the card really stands out and is consistent across all the cards in the set. Good to see a bit of info on the back of the card about the celebrity portrayed. The smooth texture of the card is good too (although it can make the cards slide around abit if you stack them on top of each other).

Donruss did well in mixing up the celebrities included in each pack. I think there was only 1 pack where I really was going "who are all these people?". In terms of how easy it is to collect the commons in the set, I ended up with 32 doubles/triples. This slightly high number might have been a result of the fact that I bought loose packets and they may not have come out of the same box. For the meantime then, it looks like I'm going to be doing a bit of trading to get the remaining commons I need.