Tuesday Twins - is it DonRuss or not?

A couple of 'twins' to show today, that illustrate how the boundaries between DonRuss and Leaf were blurred.

DonRuss's 1988 set is ubiquitous in 'lots' of cards from the 80s. It is possibly the junkiest of 'junk wax' sets. But just in case you can't remember what it looks like, here is Tony's base card from 1988.

Recently another version of this card tipped up in a joblot.

Card Number 380: Leaf, 1988; #90

Exact same card, but with a different manufacturer's logo and the frame reversed. 

On the back, we have a bit more of a clue as to what is going on. The card is bilingual in English and French, meaning it was sold in Canada. (Well, it's sort of bilingual - this wouldn't pass muster in Wales in terms of meeting the legal requirements for bilingualism. And,yes, I know the main reason for that is that it's in English and French not English and Welsh!)

The main things to notice are the lower set number and the changes to the career highlights. For comparison, here is the DonRuss cardback.

They basically dropped the last highlight so they could fit in the French translation. There were 264 cards in the Leaf release, compared to 660 in the DonRuss version, hence the renumbering.

Fast-forward a few years and Leaf and DonRuss took turns in claiming the "Studio" brand. In 1997 when it was issued as DonRuss Studio. Tony's card looked like this:

(I blogged about this back in July) Well, as was often the case back in the 90s, cards like this had parallel version released as well. 

Card Number 381: DonRuss Studio Silver Press Proof, 1997; #124

There are shiny silver foil tramlines down either side of the card, and the other lettering is picked out in silver too.

The back is exactly the same as the regular release. 

As I noted previously about this card, his entire career in baseball to this point (6 batting titles, 1 world series, 5 gold gloves, the modern record for batting average) is summarised in one throwaway line at the end of the paragraph. I've also just noticed that this could be a recent Panini-era DonRuss card photo as there are no easily recognisable club logos anywhere.

This card looks nice sat next to the regular base card. There were also gold press proofs as well, but they were harder cards to find. The set of three would look pretty sweet.

Total: 381/394