Pacific Gold Crown Die-Cut Tribute to Griffey Jr.

Yep, I jinxed it.

WHY CAN'T THERE BE ONE FREAKING BRAVES SIGNING THIS YEAR THAT ISN'T FRAUGHT WITH NEEDLESS DRAMA

Now Griffey hasn't decided, and might be going back to Seattle and blah blah blah. The beat writer seems to think he'll still be a Brave but he's as fed up as the rest of us. At least Kelly Johnson settled his arbitration case.

So anyway, I dug up my Griffey cards yesterday and found a treasure trove of whacked-out '90s inserts. I hadn't realized before now that I had 4 of the 7 Griffey Pacific Gold Crown Die-Cut cards. I'm missing 1995, 1997 and 1998 but 4 ain't bad. This was one of my favorite insert sets inthe '90s and they still look pretty good today. If anyone has an image of the three I'm missing let me know and I'll put 'em all up for posterity. I found a few cards from other players so you can get a good look at the designs.

1995

All the die cut designs were the same so if you've seen one you've seen 'em all. The first set had flashy holographic foil with the player's name stamped at the bottom in a weird Lord of the Ringsy font. Kind of like Papyrus, but not. This is one card I just can't seem to track down.

1996

Ah, the classic design. In my opinion this is the best looking of all the sets. The crown and foil name are stamed with plain gold foil with the player's initials making a pattern. In this case, KG. This is Pacific at the top of their game.

1997

This is a classy looking set too, with a gold crown and a Stadium Club looking stripe at the bottom with the player's name. The textured foil is radiating out of the crown and the position is stamped under the team logo in Spanish and English. They tried something new this year too:

Triple Crowns. Not a fan of this set even though it was much harder to find than the regular Crowns. Sometimes more is less.

1998

Classy went out the window for this disco design. There's textured gold foil diamonds at the top with silver holographic foil in the background. This card is perfect '90s excess. There was one classy Crown this year though:

'Nuff said.

1999

Pacific toned it down a little, but this set is still pretty out there. There's a pebbled texture on the crown, team logos inside the crown and gold foil and silver holofoil all around the border. I like how the holofoil makes the player's name pop out, even if it is in a space age futuristic font.

2000

Dogs and Cats... Living Together... MASS HYSTERIA. A complete explosion of holofoil with fireworks and 2000 all over it. If you're going to go over the top, THIS is the way to go over the top. My favorite design after 1996.

2001

Back to the classy. This one's a little busy with the rainbow background haunted with Pacific and team logos and the the gold foil border, but the flat gold and blue foil crown looks nice. This one is numbered 30/100 so I think it's a parallel. Plain ol' boring Gold Crowns have red foil. But wait, there's more...

HOLY CRAP AUTOGRAPHS. If Griffey doesn't want to sign with the Braves, I'm sure the Big Hurt wouldn't mind coming to the ATL...