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C.A.: 2000 Pacific Invincible Eric Karros

(Today is "Get a Different Name Day." Yup, it's an official day for changing your name. Don't like your name? This is the day to do something about it. But don't change it to "Night Owl." It's already taken. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 173rd in a series):


Over at Nachos Grande, he's busting a box of 1999 Pacific Aurora. He seems to be having a pretty good time doing it, too. He likes the Pacific sets.

Me? I'm not a fan of Pacific. Too much gold for my taste. Whenever I go through the team sets that I have for Pacific, I usually leaf through them pretty quickly. It's just not for me. The cards look like something you should hang from the rearview mirror with the fuzzy dice.

The only exception I make for Pacific is when it really went wild. Not diecut crown royale wild, that doesn't do it for me either. I'm talking 1998 Pacific Revolution wild. Now that is a phenomenal baseball card set that I must collect one day when all this vintage business is done.

It's very unlike me to salivate over late 1990s baseball cards. But even companies I don't care for, like Pacific, could knock it out of the park a time or two.

They certainly got my attention with this Invincible card from 2000. I saw it on Royals and Randoms. He picked it up at a card show in Des Moines, Iowa. It jumped at me from off the screen. I had to have it the moment Josh D. described it as "half-plastic, half-cardboard." It's a split-personality card!

Gimme.

Just about all I knew about 2000 Pacific Invincible prior to this point was the Manny Ramirez corked bat card. That's all there was to '00 Invincible, right?

Nah, the base cards are pretty freaky, too. Now that I have the card in my hand, I know that the sky blue plastic part is translucent. Hold it up to a light and that part of the card glows. Puffy white clouds appear around Karros' head.

The bottom part of the card I can barely describe. Karros is apparently so awesome that his blast caused a brick, ivy-covered brick wall, adorned with twin bats, to split open in homage. And don't forget the bounty of baseballs in the grass. Just because.

At the bottom is Karros' name written in script. In gold. Because every Pacific card had to have something written in gold.

The card is so much fun that it kind of overwhelmed the Jackie card that came with it:



And this card arrived on Jackie Robinson's 94th birthday, too.

That's the kind of attention-hog that Pacific Invincible 2000 was.

I sure do love it.

Comments

Roy-Z said…
My friends and I loved the Pacific Invicible sets "back in the day."

Not sure I came across many Dodgies, maybe a Shawn Green, maybe not. I'll be looking.
AdamE said…
I was never a big fan of Pacific but they did have a few good sets. This was definitely one of them. Their other really good set was 99 Invincible.
I like some of the Pacific sets. I didn't collect during the time period when they were released so I don't have very many. I would have probably collected the Invincible 2000 set back then. If I saw a box cheap enough I definitely would get it.
Josh D. said…
Yay! Glad you like it. The guy selling those at the show had a whole stack, but EK was the only Dodger.
gcrl said…
I bought a box of this stuff back in 00. The release date was delayed and I was worried it would never arrive. When it did, i was not disappointed. My favorite pacific release - so many odd inserts to go along with those base cards.