1989 Donruss All-Stars Baseball Forum

The copyright is 1988, so just wondering how this is a 1989 card. Just wondering for my own ordering in my collection. 

Almost all of the Donruss products from 1983-1991 have the previous years date as the copyright. They have no bearing on the year of the card. (Some of the 1988 Star Co. cards had a copyright of 1984!)

I was trying to find the forum that just came up about this topic and couldn't find it. If someone else can I'm sure that it will answer is question.

If you look ate the Main set for Donruss it has the 1988 Copy right year. If you go to 1988 Donruss it has 1987 copy right year. I have a good feeling that Donruss is a year off on their copy right year. 

My impression is that the year of issue is based on two factors:

- The date marketed by the company; and

- The date of release.

As an (almost?) absolute rule, if the product is released between December of the previous year (say 2016) and January of the following year (say 2018), and is marketed as being a product dated of the year that is the 12 months in between (say 2017), then it's clearly dated the year when it was marketed (so, 2017).  That's 99.9% of all issues.

Occasionally, a product is marketed as being of a year outside of the above parameters.  An example is the Topps Debut sets of 1989-91 (released early in the following year in each case, I think in March).  This site and Beckett use the year of issue, although COMC uses both years (i.e., 1989-90, 1990-91 and 1991-92).  Another example is "2011" Panini Limited, which was released in May(!) 2012.

If it were me, I would designate those sets in the way COMC does (year of issue plus a dash and year of release).  But it's not me.

In any event, copyright date is irrelevant.

Back in those times many of the card manufacturers would release their following years' products before Christmas in hopes of increasing/catching x-mas sales.

Year of production/copyrights do not always refer to the intended year of the set.

For quite a while you could expect Topps flagship releasing in December, now they put out so many sets and are almost exclusive in manufacturing baseball cards they don't worry about rushing it out in December like they used to.

Think of new cars. Many manufacturers released model year 2022 card during calender year 2021. Have been doing that for decades.

I'll start with this... Nobody can know the All-Star teams before they are announced AND you can't get cards produced for an All-Star set until late in the year. But it still has to come out in the next product. In the 1980's, the All-Star Inserts came out in the next season's release. So the 1989 release was for the 1988 All-Star team. That was the case for every All-Star Insert in the 1980's. Another example of what others have mentioned here about timing... Press Pass NASCAR flagship releases (almost) always had the year before listed in the copyright line. A "copyrighted 1995" flagship product was released in December of that year but was the 1996 set and a "copyrighted 2014" flagship product was also released in December of that year but was the 2015 set. If the product releases after the season is over and is looking forward to the next season, it becomes the release for the next year, not the same year it was actually made.

Thanks for all your feedback!