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Many of Donruss Playoff's football card products display the company's feel for the history of the game, but none put it on display quite like Donruss Classics. For 2007, the best players from the NFL's past are once again the subject of numbered base cards and numerous inserts alongside today's headliners.

Hobby boxes of 2007 Donruss Classics Football hold 18 packs of five cards each. On average, collectors can expect to find three autographed or memorabilia cards per box, plus an insert card of some kind in every other pack.

Base Cards

Like many current football card sets, Donruss Classics leads off with 100 NFL veterans, enough to make sure every team has at least three players represented. What makes the product unique is the next 50 cards in the set, which feature retired greats on cards numbered to 999.

Rookie cards are also a big part of the set, with 125 newcomers pictured for the first time in their NFL uniforms. The first 70 rookies are numbered to 1499, and the final 55 (mostly lesser names) are autographed and numbered to 999 or less.

The design for the 2007 base cards is reminiscent of previous seasons but a little busier than usual. Player photos are surrounded by a yellow border, and the background has a fade effect plus a multi-color horizontal stripe. Team and player info are located at the bottom, while the set logo is smack dab in the middle of the photo, making it a little difficult to read. Legends are easily identified by a banner in the upper-left corner; rookies by a circle in the upper-right.

All 275 base cards have four levels of Timeless Tributes parallels with numbering from 100 down to 10 copies. Many of the players can also be found in the product's well-known autographed parallel, Significant Signatures, on cards numbered to no more than 100.

All told, a sample box provided by Donruss Playoff yielded 79 veterans, one legend (Y.A. Tittle), two regular rookies (Sidney Rice and Chris Davis) and one autographed rookie (Danny Ware). I also found a Bronze Timeless Tributes parallel of rookie corner Aaron Ross numbered to 100.

Memorabilia Cards

Classics' historic bent carries over to many of its memorabilia card inserts, where collectors can find game-worn swatches from a wide selection of former stars. Legendary Players Jerseys presents 30 of these players, while Classic Singles Jerseys offer up 30 more.

When one legend isn't enough, Classic Combos, Classic Triples and Classic Quads Jerseys serve up two, three and four swatches respectively. The Quads cards have some really impressive combinations this year, like Johnny Unitas/Sammy Baugh/Otto Graham/Joe Montana and Brett Favre/Dan Marino/Fran Tarkenton/John Elway.

Current NFL players can be found on VIP Membership Jerseys, Sunday's Best Jerseys, Monday Night Heroes Jerseys and Timeless Triples Jerseys, the latter featuring three players from the same team. One final game-worn set - Saturday Stars Jerseys - also revolves around current players but uses pieces from their college jerseys. Donruss Playoff even acquired a rare Texas jersey from spokesman Vince Young for use in this year's set.

All of the jersey cards are numbered, and all of them have autographed or patch parallels - or both. My review box churned out two memorabilia cards: a Classic Singles Jerseys Bob Lilly (#'d to 250) and a Sunday's Best Jerseys Prime Steve McNair (#'d to 25) with a sweet two-color patch that appears to come from the 'N' on his nameplate.

Autographed Cards

Most of the autographed cards up for grabs in Classics are either signed rookies, Significant Signatures or parallels of the memorabilia cards covered in the previous section. One other signed insert, School Colors Signatures, focuses on 30 NFL players in their college days on cards numbered to 25 or less.

My box's lone autograph was the Ware autographed RC.

Insert Cards

As with most Donruss Playoff products, all of the memorabilia and autographed inserts can be found in regular versions as well. Most are numbered to 1000, with parallels ranging all the way down to 25 copies.

This year's inserts don't distinguish themselves the same way Donruss Elite's inserts did, but they're still pretty well done and add a little something extra to about a third of the packs. I pulled six in all: one each from Classic Singles, Sunday's Best, Saturday Stars, Classic Combos, Legendary Players and Monday Night Heroes.