One card only: Heavy is the head that wears the Crown Royale

Sundays are days when I profile one card. This one has a bit of a story to it as it's one of the few where I really remember the circumstances of buying it.

In the shop at the National Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, they sell packs of assorted baseball cards from every baseball team. They are repacks, and there's no way of knowing what you're getting, except you can see the card on the top. Today's card was on the top and I knew as soon as I saw it that I would have to buy the pack of cards.

Card Number 84: Pacific Crown Royale, 2000; #120

It's a die-cut card in the shape of a crown. The amount of gold foil on this card is huge, but it's not just whanged on there for it's own sake. It's arranged nicely to ensure the crown design is golden. You can see why this stood out on the card racks.

I've said before that I think the baseball card hobby is poorer without Pacific. This kind of thing is what I'm talking about. On a holiday when I bought loads of baseball cards, this is the one I remember buying!

This card was issued in Tony's penultimate season. He had recorded over 3,000 hits by this point. The 2000 season was problematic for him as he had knee surgery. He managed to record over .300 in both 2000 and 2001, although he played very few games those seasons. His final tally of 19 seasons averaging over .300 meant he was still 4 seasons behind Ty Cobb, who is mentioned on the card here.

Another little personal story about this card is that when I went to scan it I found there were actually two cards in the sleeve. They had adhered together. I had always thought it was a double thickness card, but actually it was two regular thickness cards. That was a nice little bonus that livened up the tedious job of scanning my cards!

Total: 84/394