Rippin' Old School Pacific: Who Doesn't Love Shiny Die-Cut Inserts?!

It's not often that I buy a box of baseball cards for myself anymore (other than Allen & Ginter).  Part of the reason is cost (new cards are much too expensive in my opinion) and another part of the reason is that with my Reds being so bad I don't feel the need to even collect the 2022 edition of my team.  Therefore, when the pack ripping itch does hit me, I feel my dollars are better spent if I look back in time a bit for an older box - and that's exactly what I did recently with my purchase of a box of 2000 Pacific.  

The 2000 Pacific set is one that I decided to try and build this year.  Hopefully, once I get this box fully ripped and sorted I'll get a proper want list up on my blog (and update my want list over on TCDB as well).  First things first though, I need to finish ripping through the packs in the box!

Packs 13 - 18:

As usual, we'll start with a sampling of some of my favorite base cards from the bunch packs.

I ended up pulling a bunch of duplicates in this batch of packs - in fact, within the six packs I opened to write this post I pulled two of that Mike Piazza card (at least it's a nice one to get duplicates of).

I also found two different inserts.  First up, a Gold Crown Die-Cut of Sammy Sosa.

The Gold Crown cards are seeded 1:25 packs so slightly rarer than one-per-box.  At 36 cards in size for the Gold Crown set, good luck building the entire thing (I'm not chasing any of the insert sets out of the 2000 Pacific set.

My second insert was a Diamond Leaders card featuring the best of the Yankees from 1999.

At 2:25 packs (or about two-per-box) this 30 card set would be much, much easier to build than the Gold Crown set (but the Gold Crown cards are arguably much cooler to see in person so given the choice I'd still personally go for the Gold Crown set)!

Despite getting a bunch of duplicate base cards (a bummer for a set builder like me), I was still mostly happy with this batch of packs.  One more set of six packs remains to be ripped and then I'll be done with my box and ready to start updating my want lists once again!