1986 Donruss Box Bottom Panels

Getting back to our look at the trend that Donruss started in 1985 with putting cards on the bottom of their wax boxes, Donruss continued the practice in 1986:


Once again Donruss created a card of the completed puzzle that was used as the insert in 1986 Donruss packs with this year's puzzle featuring Hank Aaron.

The numbering on the cards actually picks up from where the 1985 set left off (PC1 - PC3) as the 1986 box features cards PC4 - PC6


with the puzzle card being unnumbered (because Donruss wanted kids to "carefully cut along the lines to form your special Hank Aaron puzzle").

Apparently Donruss thought Kirk Gibson and Doug DeCinces were the key stars of the day since not only were they on the box bottom, they were also on the box top:


All Donruss Baseball boxes featured the same 4 cards.

However.... not being content to just put cards on the bottom of their base brand, Donruss extended the box bottom card idea to their other major offering that year - the 1986 Donruss All Stars / Pop Up set:


These boxes feature a different set of cards on the bottom (although they once again feature the Hank Aaron puzzle)


and they continue the numbering system with cards PC7 - PC9:


One thing I find interesting about these panels is the player selection. You would think that either Don Mattingly or Daryl Strawberry would have shown up on one of the panels as those were two of the players that were driving the card market around this time (until everyone starting going crazy looking for 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco rookies shortly after these cards were issued).