1996 Part 7

PacificThe Pacific Trading Card Company started producing cards, mainly for the the Hispanic market, in 1993. By 1996, Pacific was trying to broaden its market. This year's offering featured 450 cards. The cards had full bleed photography, high gloss and gold foil. The card backs were also high gloss and featured a head shot of the player. The text about the player on the back is in English and Spanish. This set is also known as Pacific Crown and Pacific Crown Collection.

Pacific Cramer's Choice
This 10-card set featured the top players of the game. It is die cut and designed to look like a trophy. Cramer, by the way, was Michael Cramer, the president and CEO of Pacific. The player background on the front of the card is a refractive foil. The 'base' features gold foil lettering. These cards were a tough pull being inserted at a rate of 1 in 721 packs. I paid $9.65 for this Alomar card in September 2004.

Pacific Gold Crown Die Cuts
This was the second year for this insert card. The 36-card set was inserted at a rate of 1:37. The top of the card features a die-cut gold foil crown. I got this card for $2.00 in August 2003.

The Pacific set also featured 4 other insert sets: Pacific Estrellas Latinos, Pacific Hometown, Pacific Milestones and Pacific October Moments. As I was preparing this post, I won auctions on eBay for all 4 of them.

Pacific Carlos Baerga Celebrities Softball
This is a stand-alone 8-card set commorating an annual charity softball game organized by Carlos Baerga. It features some of the top players of the time, including Sammy Sosa, Frank Thomas, Roberto Alomar and Mike Piazza. If you every wonder what your favorite baseball player looked like in short pants, here's your opportunity. I picked up the entire set in a Fairfield repack box in October 2008 for about 8 cents/card.

Pacific Prism
This was the first year for Pacific Prism and seens to be an attempt to produce a more upscale card. The background features an abstract design with lots of silver foil. The set had 144 cards. I paid $0.15 each for this card and a Dante Bichette card in May 2003.

Pacific Prism Gold
Pacific's first parallel set. It features gold foil instead of silver. The cards were inserted at a rate of 1 in 18 packs. I pulled this card out of a repack for about $0.04 in June 2007.

Pacific Prism Fence Busters
This is a nice looking card featuring a multicolored foil background with a high gloss finish. It was a 20-card set inserted at a rate of 1 in 37 packs. I paid $3.99 for this card on eBay in September 2004.

Pacific Prism Red Hot Stars
Also a pretty nice looking card featuring an embossed red foil background (red hot, get it). Another 20-card set inserted at 1:37. I paid $3.00 on eBay for this in September 2004.

There is one other insert set, Pacific Prism Flame Throwers which is in the mail to me.