Card of the Day: Rashaan Salaam 1996 Select Certified Mirror Red Premium Stock #78

Flashback Product of the Week: 2001 Pacific Private Stock Baseball

Like a lot of collectors this evening, I decided to dig out the few Jason Heyward cards I had laying around my base card boxes.  Today Heyward made his ML debut for the Braves and in his first at bat hit a home run.  If you thought eBay was filled with Heyward cards before, you just wait.  Now its time for the “Flashback Product of the Week”.

Pacific had some of the most visually eye appealing sets ever produced.  They knew how to properly make a “die-cut” card.  In 2001, they produced a product called Private Stock Baseball.  It consisted of a 150-card base set, and inside each pack you were guaranteed to pull a relic card.  Back in ’01, having a product that contained a relic card inside each pack was still somewhat of a big deal.  This unfortunately was the last baseball product Pacific made because they lost their license to produce MLB cards.  I’m glad to see Panini plans to bring back the Pacific name with one of their basketball products this year.

Although each pack contains a relic card, I’ve heard a rumor that Pacific included fake jerseys, patches and bats into this product causing them to lose their license.  Now I’m a very skeptical collector.  Every collector should be, considering some of the activities that take place within The Hobby today.  I don’t believe everything I read, and nor should you.  But by 2001, Pacific was facing some serious financial problems and perhaps they released this product as a last ditch effort.  Maybe they knew the ship was going down and they just thought “What the hell?”  This rumor came from former Playoff employee James McCay who once ran a website dedicated to fighting fraud inside The Hobby.  For those collectors who have been reading blogs for years you may have heard of him.  Usually licenses aren’t renewed because they don’t have the money.  Makes you wonder how a company in such financial troubles could afford authentic relics from all the players in that set.  Believe what you want.  I’m just telling you what I heard.  I think the license wasn’t renewed because they couldn’t make the payments.