Donruss baseball returned late last month as Panini America reintroduced Donruss Elite Extra Edition. How ironic too: a trading friend of mine sent me a 2004 Donruss Elite autographed rookie card of an Astros prospect named Ben Zobrist. And the next day, the newest version arrives in the mail.

This year’s model has some of the same characteristics of that 2004 product, but not much. Oh, the distinctive Donruss Elite logo is evident, but the rest of the design is very stark. The player’s photograph is a cut-out, set against a shiny, glossy background. A semi-stenciled headline proclaims “Extra Edition” across the top of the card.

It’s a little too shiny for my liking, but others might find it attractive.

Because of licensing issues, you won’t find any major-league logos or team nicknames on these cards. All have been airbrushed, and the player is referred to like this: Josh Hamilton, Texas, outfield.

So this year’s checklist is thin on major-leaguers but heavy on prospects. There are 25 “commons,” or major-leaguers. The hobby box I sampled had 13 of the 25 players.

Each hobby box contains 20 packs, with five cards per pack. The real lure for this box are the six autographs sprinkled within those packs.

There are 90 prospect cards in the set, and the numbering system is a bit confusing. That’s because there are prospect cards numbered 1 through 100 and then 151 through 190. Cards numbered from 101 to 150 are autograph prospect cards. It seems to me that those cards easily could have been numbered 141 to 190, allowing all the prospect cards to be lumped together.

The six autographs in the box I looked at were on-sticker signatures, and there was a preference for signing with purple Sharpies — five of the six were purple. The sixth was a very thin green, for a Gabriel Rosa card that was numbered to 10. The other autos were from Keenyn Williams (White Sox), Chris Heston (Giants), David Herbek (White Sox), Danny Hultzen (Mariners) and Angelo Songco (Dodgers).

Songco’s signature, by the way, is one of the nicest I have ever seen by a baseball player.

There are several inserts, including Building Blocks, which depicts two, three and four players on a card.  Best Compared To inserts takes a prospect and matches his skill sets to a current major-leaguer. For example, prospect Sonny Gray has a similar build and delivery as Roy Oswalt.

Other inserts include Yearbook and Elite Series. There are also die-cut parallels of the base set, for collectors who love chase sets.

Not a bad set. The one negative were the four doubles from the “commons” set. Not a deal breaker, but I am greedy, I love awesome collation. This was close to being pretty good though.

And I can say that overall, this set is pretty good.