Friday Five: Top 5 Sets from 1999

1999 was a really great year for baseball cards.  I remember buying a box of Topps cards right after Thanksgiving that year and being happy and entertained with cards the entire year.  I feel like I could right a book about the card sets from 1999, but instead I have narrowed the list down to just five sets. My five favorites:

5. Skybox Molten Metal- This reminds of this project I started awhile back...I got sidetracked.  That is going to be one of my summer projects.  Back to the set.  I split my first box of these cards with a kid I mentored during the summer while I was waiting to start teaching.  I loved the look and feel of the cards and the inserts were incredible.  There were the Pointillism insert set.....

and of course my favorite cards in the set were the metal parallel cards......

I know the late 90s and early 2000s were filled with tons of 100-200 card, premium such and such, base sets with some cool gimmicky insert sets that were cool for a month or two and are now forgettable.  Molten Metal was a little bit different/cooler than the others.  Other card companies had made insert cards with the pointilism pictures and metal cards, but something about this product clicked with me as a collector.  Cool set and boxes can still be found pretty cheap.  

4. Crown Royale- Pacific was a really important card company for me around this time.  They thought outside the box and had some truly unique looking card products.  I think I did more of their products in 2000, but for me the Crown Royale set was a huge starting point for me in collecting their cards.  Before Crown Royal I tended to think of Pacific as "that other" card company, not Topps or Upper Deck, Pinnacle, or Fleer.  The die cut cards featured the Pacific brand logo crown with a player photo over the top.  The set also featured all of the usual Pacific set trappings with colored parallels and cool looking inserts.  I don't see many boxes of this product anymore, nor do I see many sets.  There are a bunch of the singles up on Ebay and COMC.  There were also a few other cool Pacific products sets from 1999 that are probably a fun project too.   I ended up also putting together an Aurora and Paramount set that summer.

3. SP Signature- This was Upper Deck's answer to the Donruss and Leaf Signature mega-autograph sets.  Packs of this product cost $20 and contained a few base cards and an autograph.  I don't remember pulling anyone too cool out of this product, but I have picked up a whole bunch of these cards over the years, especially the Cardinals.  SP Signature cards are all on card autographs, the set features tons of Hall of Famers, and they are pretty readily available.  Some of the cards can be pretty pricey obviously if you are trying to track down a copy of the Maddux or other short printed star.  Still there are plenty of good players with inexpensive, on-card signatures in this product.  

2.  Sports Illustrated Greats of the Game- Another per pack autograph product that roughly had the same cost as the SP Signature product.  This also had on-card autographs (no stickers in 1999) and featured older players including a bunch of Hall of Famers.  The boxes run hot and cold, but I have already told that story on here before.  Like the SP Signature set there are loads of singles floating around of some pretty good players that can be had for less than an arm and a leg.  This set is definitely worth a little bit of your time and money.  Most year's this set could have easily been the best set of the year, but in 1999 there was this gem......

1999 Century Legends- I like the base set, but this set is here strictly for the autographs.  Unlike SP Signature and Greats of the Game, this was not a per pack autograph set, but this is one of the best autograph sets of all-time.  Black and white backgrounds, color player picture on the side, and clean crisp on card signatures of some of the greatest baseball players of all-time on cardboard.  I own a slew of these and would not trade them.  In fact, I have upgraded several of the cards I owned searching for better copies or nicer signatures.  If you love baseball cards owning at least one autograph from this set should be a must for your collection.  If you are looking for someone inexpensive for the sake of owning one there is Bobby Thomson or Bucky Dent.  from there the price of the cards goes up.  Anyone own a Barry Bonds?   

The Coolness of Pacific Autographs

Over the past few years of blogging I have heaped plenty of love on Pacific Trading Cards.  If you collected baseball cards in the 90s it was hard not to love the flashy and innovative card producer.  Over the last three years I have written pieces about die their die cuts cards:

I have done pieces about how cool their checklists were:

and those other cool cards that were just special to Pacific like the dugout net card:

However, I amazed to find that I had never done a write up on any Pacific autographs.  I was shocked.  Back in the day I really loved Pacific autographs and had dozens of them in my collection.  They are still there, but they are just 15-16 years old now.  The Pacific autographs have aged great and look better than many of the autographs that companies like Topps and Panini are cranking out now.  What made them great?  Let me show off an old card from the autograph box:

This card is just awesome.  On card signature, die cut, cool design, and a great player.  This was the world of Pacific autographs back in the day.  There are numerous sets that Pacific cracked out in the late 90s and early 2000s that gave us cool cards like this Sheffield autograph out of the 2000 Pacific Omega set and again, this card is cool than 3/4 of the new autographs that are floating around on the market from new releases.

I also really like the Crowne Royale autographs which were also a 2000 calendar year release:

Again, this card has all of the same appealing characteristics of the Sheffield card above: on card signature, die cut, cool design, and really cool player.  Not to say that all Pacific autographs are All-Star caliber or die cuts, but there is a lot of love here in the making of this card.

The best part of collecting Pacific autographs is the fact that there are still tons of them floating around on Ebay and COMC and they are all pretty affordable.  Ebay currently has more than 200 Pacific autographs up on their site and COMC has almost 50.  There are some great looking cards in the lot ranging from an on-card Chipper Jones autograph for just over $30 to autographs of late 90s prospect legend Travis "Gookie" Dawkins for around $2.

I recently landed a brand new Pacific autograph as a throw in for a trade I completed on Facebook.  I love throw-ins, but found this card really cool......

Not a die cut, but this was a really cool and innovative set for the time from the Pacific Revolution set.  The card actually features a piece of game used ball (slightly blah), but they are signed by a Major League player.  It's not quite the Upper Deck Sweet Spot set, but it came out about a year and a half before the popular Upper Deck product first hit the shelves during the summer of 2001.  Loads of great names in this set too from Greg Maddux, Barry Bonds, and ARod to players like Shane Reynolds.  While this autograph was a throw-in, and might be one of the worst autographs in the set, the card features a guy who won 35 games in the two years leading up to the release of this product.

I probably should sit down and do a bigger post on Pacific autographs, but this should give you a good idea about the basics.  If you're an autograph collector and looking for a good, fun, collecting challenge, putting together one of these Pacific sets would be a lot of fun.

2000 Pacific Crown Royale Jeff Weaver Autograph

There is not much of a Jeff Weaver market these days, but I am always willing to pick up his cards when I see them on the cheap.  He spent half a summer with the Cardinals, but was a major contributor to the team's World Series Championship during the 2006 season.  Weaver started the season with the Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim), lost his job to his brother Jered, and was traded to the Cardinals for a minor leaguer.  A few months later Weaver won the fifth game of the World Series defeating his former team the Detroit Tigers.  World Series winning pitchers are always worth a few dollars.  Even Anthony Reyes.

2000 Pacific Crown Royale Jeff Weaver Autograph

Besides offering me a chance to own a new Jeff Weaver card, I was also happy to pick up a cool autographed card from an old Pacific set.  Pacific put out quite a few autographs during the 2000 card calendar and they are all on-card signatures with several of the different lines featuring different die-cuts.  The Pacific autographs can be a little bit tricky to find at times, and since they were die-cuts, they tend to be condition sensitive.  There are some good names in the autograph lines too.  This Weaver card hails from the Crown Royale set which also features autographs of Lance Berkman, Trot Nixon, Alfonso Soriano, Brian Giles, and Eric Gagne.  I think I might actually be a Peter Bergeron away from this set.