Box Review: 2022 Donruss Optic (Hobby)

Over on my Discord Channel, I'm running my first "Breaker's Club of 2023."  That particular group break consists of 20 different boxes of cards - and of those twenty boxes, I do plan to write at least a few box reviews here on the blog.  I call that content double-dipping!

Today, we have a box from the first night of the group break - 2022 Donruss Optic (hobby).  

The 2022 Optic box comes with 20 packs with each pack containing only four cards.  The box promises two autographs (on average) as well as the potential for a slew of different parallels and inserts.

Out of the 80 cards in the box, we pulled only 28 base cards!  

With a 200 card base set, it's clear that buying hobby boxes isn't the way to try and complete the base set.  That being said, I don't think Optic is designed for set collectors nearly as much as it is designed for player collectors - after all, the main draw of the set is the countless parallels.  

Speaking of parallels, our box produced a ton of different parallels.  Before I show off what we found, here's the full list of possible parallels in the set:

Carolina Blue & White, Holo, Lime Green, Photon, Pink, Quantum, Red Wave, White Sparkle, Pink Velocity #/249, Red White & Blue #/199, Black Stars #/149, Orange #/125, Blue Velocity #/99, Green Dragon #/99, Pandora #/99, Pandora Blue #/99, Pandora Purple #/99, Pandora Red #/99, Red Dragon #/99, Spirit of '76 #/76, Blue #/75, Red #/60, Carolina Blue #/50, Freedom #/46, Teal Velocity #/35, Black #/25, Liberty #/25, Gold #/10, Cracked Ice Blue #/7, Cracked Ice Green #/7, Cracked Ice Red #/7, Green #/5, Black Finite 1/1, Eagle 1/1, Gold Vinyl 1/1

Yikes!  That's a lot of parallels to track down if you are a player collector.  

By far the most common parallels are the Holo cards.  

Our box had five of those for the base set (as well as five more Holo parallels of various insert sets which I'll show a little later on in the review).

The only other non-serially numbered parallel in our box was the Hobby-only Photon parallel of Domingo Acevedo.

I get that the design on the Photon parallel isn't for everyone but I kind of dig it because it's different.  A page full of neat (colorful) backgrounds like that could be quite cool if you ask me.

Now, to the serially-numbered parallels.  I'll go from highest to lowest in terms of numbering starting with the Pink Velocity #/249 each.

The Dodgers made out particularly well here with two of the five cards going to LA.  I do like the Rated Rookie logo a lot, glad to see Panini is still using that on the base cards.  I also have to admit that the Pink Velocity parallel design as a whole is pretty sweet.  A full set of cards from this parallel set would be super shiny and probably look quite amazing in a binder.

Next, a quartet of Red, White, and Blue each #/199.

For my money, I greatly prefer the slightly more common Pink Velocity parallels over the Red, White, and Blue parallels.  There isn't anything particularly wrong with the Red, White, and Blue card design but it just doesn't "pop" as much as some of the other parallels.

After seeing all of the above parallels, you'd be forgiven if you thought we were done looking at parallels...but you'd also be wrong!  In fact, we are only getting started on parallel designs, though now they will quickly start to get rarer and rarer.

Next up, the Black Stars parallels #/149.  

These are super cool if you ask me - catch the light just right and you can see shiny stars in the card design.  I didn't realize it as we went through the box in real time but we ended up with two of the exact same card - Corey Seager's Diamond King base card.  Even more interesting, we ended up getting Seager's card #025/149 and #026/149.  How often does someone own back-to-back serially numbered cards?  Ben M. will be able to say he does at least since he has Texas in this edition of the Breaker's Club!

We pulled two Orange parallels, each numbered out of 125.  

These are nice, though fairly standard, parallel options in which the brightly colored border makes the card pop (and definitely makes the card feel quite different than the regular base card).  

Next, out of only 99 comes this Aaron Judge Blue Velocity parallel.

As a math professor, I'm not quite sure why Panini used the word "velocity" as part of the parallel set name but at least the design is cool enough that I won't argue about the naming convention too much.  

We may have only pulled one of the parallels numbered out of 99 but we found two parallels numbered out of 76, both part of the Spirit of '76 parallel set:

I like parallel designs that are obvious parallels so for me the Spirit of '76 parallels work fine.  It's clear these aren't base cards at a glance - and the design pops enough to feel special.  Good stuff.

Our final three parallels come from three relatively rare parallel sets:

The Goldschmidt is a Blue parallel #/75.  The Hendricks is a Red parallel #/60, and finally, the rarest parallel in the box is the Bryson Stott card from the Black parallel set and is numbered out of only 25!

Phew, that was a lot of parallels to get through!  If you thought I was done with the entire box, again, you'd be forgiven but you'd be wrong!  We now turn our attention to the inserts - and in some cases, parallels of inserts.

We'll start with the Mythical insert set - a set in which we pulled five "base" cards of plus one Holo parallel (Yelich).

If you ask me, the Mythical design looks like it belongs in Gypsy Queen a lot more than it belongs in a set like Optic.  I like the design well enough but it's a weird fit for this particular set in my opinion.  We did get two Yelich Mythical cards, one Holo parallel and one base.  As you'll see, getting multiple cards of the same player with the same insert set was a common theme for this box...

Next, the Rated Prospect set.  Here, we found four base inserts plus one Holo parallel (Nick Pratto).

The Rated Prospect design looks too much like the base set design for me.  I think these cards would be better suited as a subset within the base set as opposed to a standalone insert set.  

Next, my personal least favorite insert set of the box - Lights Out.  We ended up with three base inserts plus one Holo parallel (Luis Gil).

Gil showed up twice here, once in regular form and once in a slightly shinier parallel form.  The design of this set doesn't do much for me, I guess it's dark because the set is called "lights out" but I still find that kind of dumb. 

Moving on to another dumb set, but this time a set where the dumb design works for me:  Splash!  We found three Splash! base cards plus a Holo parallel (Kyle Tucker).

Much like with the Lights Out parallel, we found two versions of one player with the Splash! set.  That same phenomenon happened with our next insert set as well.

We ended up with two "The Rookies" base inserts plus one Holo parallel (Gil).

I guess this was a Luis Gil hot box of sorts since we pulled a pair of his "The Rookies" card plus a pair of his Lights Out cards, in each case, one base and one parallel.

Finally, we end the insert section with the coolest design of all - Bomb Squad.

Our box yielded two Bomb Squad cards (no parallels).  I would have preferred a couple more of these cards as opposed to most of the other inserts.  In fact, I think the inserts are by far the weakest part of the 2022 Donruss Optic set.  Most of them felt like a wasted card slot where I'd rather get another base parallel or even regular base card instead.

That takes us to the end of the parallels and inserts, so let's close this review out with a look at our two promised autographs:

You can expect to pull Rookie Autographs from this product - and while there are plenty of big name autos possible, it's not exactly likely.  Still, you never know how a rookie auto will pan out so come back in a year or two and we'll see if our autograph selection was any good or not!

Overall, I give the 2022 Donruss Optic (hobby) box the following rating:

Set Design:  C+

Collation:  B-

Opening Thrill:  B+

Overall:  B-

The 2022 Donruss Optic box is undoubtedly a fun box to rip.  It was absolutely perfect for a group break because the inserts, parallels, and hits were scattered across almost every team in MLB.  That's definitely nice.  The downside to a box of Optic is that I don't know who exactly I'd recommend buying a personal box of this stuff for.  You don't get enough base cards for a set collector.  While you do get plenty of parallels, the odds of even getting one parallel of a specific player are quite poor.  The inserts are a mixed bag, but none of them are mind-blowing.  No, I think this box isn't for the average collector who might buy one personal box.  Instead, this is the type of product that you should seek out group breaks for!