Yes. This is my actual 2015 Christmas tree.
Imagine opening a blaster box of 2015 Topps Update and finding a shiny, die-cut Christmas tree ornament. Some of you would be excited. Others would be intrigued. While I'm guessing the vast majority of collectors would probably scratch their heads wondering the connection between baseball and the December holiday.
Okay. Maybe I'm projecting my personal feelings... but that's exactly what I was thinking when I first laid eyes on these inserts many, many years ago... back when a company called Pacific flooded the market with sports cards that always seemed to feature an excessive amount of gold foil and plenty of rainbow colored foil parallels for player collectors to chase.
They were essentially the Liberace of trading card card companies... which wasn't exactly my cup of tea back in their production years.
However over time, I've learned to appreciate their creativity and ingenuity. It definitely took some outside-of-the-box thinking when they decided to produce a card set centered around collectors and the internet (1998 Pacific Online). They also produced several bilingual trading card products, which I personally think was way ahead of its time.
But getting back to the point of this post... they were the only company brave enough to create cards that could also be used as Christmas tree ornaments:
To Mike Cramer and Pacific Trading Cards... I tip my Santa cap to you guys.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and sayonara!
Extra Innings
1. Pacific originally issued these ornament inserts in their 1999 Pacific Prisms football and 1999-00 Pacific Revolution hockey products.
2. Another set of football ornaments was produced in 2000 for their Revolution product line, but unfortunately... they left hockey fans ornament-less.
3. Baseball fans also have two different sets to chase. The one pictured above is from their 2000 Pacific flagship product, which I was able to find on eBay for $15 (+ $2.22 shipping) back in March.
4. In 2001, Pacific expanded the baseball checklist and produced twenty-four ornaments for collectors to decorate their tree.
9 comments:
I love this Fuji! I have thought about doing something like this before, but never have followed through on it. Awesome!
Good to know I'm not the only one out there with a baseball card tree. Merry Christmas!
Verry Cool! Merry Christmas.
I too wasn't a big fan of all the different Pacific inserts and parallels at the time. But now every time I come across something new (to me), my appreciation grows more and more for them and their creativity. Have a Merry Christmas!
Never have seen those before. Very cool. Happy Happy Holidays!!
I just got my first one that I posted yesterday. I need to hunt down more Griffeys and the Ron Dayne one.
I was a fan of Pacific products. Like what they brought to the table.
Thank you for sharing your tree with us (and for sharing the glory of Liberace with us).
5 years late to the party, but these are awesome
Better late than never. Lol. Just realized I never responded to comments on this post.
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