Despite his huge personality and impact on baseball, David Ortiz’s rookie card has been flying under the radar for years. His first cards showed up in 1997 in sets from Fleer and Donruss.
The latter was a 1997 Donruss Signature Series card with an autograph by Ortiz in the wrong spot: He signed directly on his photo instead of the area earmarked for a signature at the bottom of the card. There were several thousand issued, some with red borders and (more limited) some with green borders.
Recent eBay auctions include one ungraded green Signature Series card that brought $304 on 25 bids. We also saw eight ungraded red versions sell for prices between $150 and $175. (We told you he was undervalued!)
One confusing element of Ortiz rookies is the fact that he appears as “David Arias” on his first Fleer base card — #512 in Series 2 of the company’s 1997 Ultra set. Two inserts from that set —
