This card referred to the player`s surname "Smiley". Now actually the smiley face was around before the emoji - the word "smiley" as an adjective for smiling first being used in the late 1840s. However it took over a hundred years before anyone drew one, and that was in 1957.
Now the smiley face is a very popular emoticon, and even before they were thought of it was one of the first symbols made out of standard text in the 1980s. We will learn about that tomorrow. But because the smiley is copyright, the emoji is 😊 ("Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes") and it is described as a yellow face with smiling eyes, a closed smile, and rosy cheeks. It stands for happiness, and sends a virtual smile to the person to whom you are contacting, though it is more of a friend icon than anything romantic, the kind of the thing you send if you do not yet know someone well enough for a hug emoticon, but you wish in your heart that you did.
As you can tell I am a simple soul....
Apart from a three card test run, Donruss started selling baseball cards in 1981. This was a "First Edition Collectors Series" of 605 cards, which was sold in packets of eighteen cards and a stick of gum.
Unfortunately Topps then took Donruss to court, claiming that Topps had the exclusive right to put gum in packets with cards - and Topps won.
The following year Donruss had no gum, and a problem, because Major League Baseball did not allow baseball cards to be sold commercially, they had to be given away with something, which was the purpose of the gum. (by the way, I didn`t actually know this until I read this text, which was supplied by my baseball correspondent!) Then someone had a brainwave, and designed a jigsaw puzzle of Babe Ruth that would be complete in sixty-three pieces, a few of which were in each packet. That meant that you were buying the jigsaw and the cards were a gift. Now this jigsaw was titled "Hall of Fame Diamond King" which presumably gave them the idea for our cards, because though the 1982 set was of 653 cards and seven checklists, the first twenty six of those cards are "Diamond Kings" - a large beautifully drawn head shot (sometimes in a helmet and sometimes in a cap) and a small "action shot" as well.
All the "Diamond Kings" that were issued until 1991 look pretty much the same in style - the only difference is that for the 1984 set the top of the card is suddenly festooned with red white and blue bunting. All the sets followed the same format too, cards one to twenty-six being the players, and card twenty-seven the checklist. They looked very unusual, and you could tell them almost instantly at a glance. However few collectors probably realised that these cards were actually taken from watercolours, painted by Dick Perez, who over four hundred of them, starting in 1982.
With the 1991 set, some of the players started to be shown just full length in an action pose, and in a much more photographic style. And in 1992 they were foil cards. By the way the jigsaw remained a constant, a different player every year! Then, in 2009, Donruss was bought out by Panini, and the Diamond Kings were shelved, only returning at the 2012 National Sports Collectors Convention. Unless anyone knows of any earlier - test runs etc.