Random Ray - 1999 Pacific Paramount

Pacific made some good baseball cards during the 1990s. 

I might miss the Pacific cards more than Upper Deck and some of the more popular brands that have disappeared over the past two decades either due to bankruptcy or the card company losing its license. Pacific always made solid products with good looking inserts and parallels and were always affordable. I can't remember walking away from a pack of Pacific cards feeling disappointed.   

As far as Paramount goes, the product ran three year, and it was good for player collectors. The inserts were nice and I wish Lankford had appeared on a die-cut card, but Pacific used name brand players for those sets. The Cardinals player for the inserts was always Mark McGwire, maybe Ankiel, J.D. Drew, or Jim Edmonds in their later products. 

As a Lankford collector, the win with Paramount was the parallel sets, which were numerous and had several higher print runs that were easy to find. Even today, the prices of 1990s inserts and parallels has skyrocketed, but you can find the Paramount parallels for a few dollars online. 

Here is the front.  Sticking with the base card.  

The design for Paramount did not change much from year to year. There was also a tightly cropped action shot on the front with a name bar on the bottom of the card and the Paramount logo on the top corner. The main difference was the background on the photo. I believe the first year, the background was untouched, this was the second year with the faded/filtered out background, and the third year Pacific just colored in the background a solid color.  

The card stock was consistent with their base set. For a $1.50 pack of cards, this is pretty nice.  

Back of the card.  

There is a lot here and it borders on being too busy with the stripes running vertically up the left side, the red stripe on the top under the player and team name added to the stat bar, player photo, and other features.  

The stat bar on Paramount was always a little odd with the yellow and orange bars. Pacific went with this design the last two years of the product. It's not that it's unreadable, just an odd color choice and layout.  The color photo is nice in the top corner and it also feels like Pacific took some effort into finding an actual highlight to write up for the fact box. I like positive regards of the player. Career high in total bases and a home run off of Greg Maddux is as positive as it gets.  

There is a Cardinals logo underneath the fact box. That's more busy.  

Overall, just a great card, especially from a pack that only cost $1.50.