Set Appreciation Post #21 - 2000 Pacific Aurora

Pacific Aurora has a mundane base set with a few incredible inserts, which makes it a pretty awesome product. You've got to take the boring with the exciting with this product.  

2000 Pacific Aurora was also the first card to feature a Hall of Famer in his new uniform and they did it in a creative way. Overall, this is one of the worst products that Pacific Trading cards made in the late 1990s and early 2000s and it is still probably middle of the pack in terms of overall quality. They were a high floor, high ceiling type of card company that is sadly lacking in the current baseball card market. 

I miss Pacific. 

Shall we look at the 2000 Autora set?  

Here is the base design......

Pacific started the Aurora product in 1998 and it basically had the same design concept all three years it was produced. Two photos on the front, one action and one posed, along with a solid colored background. The design in decent. I know the teal colored background is a little weird on this Darin Erstad card, but this is one of the few teams where that statement is true.

Pacific was consistent with their brands and the products tended to run true to that branding from year to year. While this is not the most exciting design concept, you knew exactly what you were getting when you bought these cards. The original Aurora was also a per-pack-insert product released in 1998 that was sold at retail stores. The 2000 set was a Hobby issued product with no per-pack insert guarantee.     

Back of the card. 

I like the sepia photo with the gold and maroon colored writing and trim. Really good look. The stats are basic, but the large photo and readable card numbers in the bottom right-hand corner more than make-up for anything left off the card by Pacific. Solid effort here. 

Let's get one highlight out of the way.  

Best Base Card 

The off-season proceeding the 2000 baseball season featured the high drama of Ken Griffey Jr. demanding a trade off the Mariners. He had a no-trade clause and was essentially only willing to accept a trade that put him on his hometown Cincinnati Reds. The trade ended up happening in early February after teams had made their way to Spring Training and the early 2000 baseball card products had already hit the shelves. 

Griffey getting traded to the Reds was huge news. The trade put the three best home runs hitters of the day, Griffey, McGwire, and Sosa, all in the same division for the foreseeable future, or Mark McGwire got gimpy knees in the middle of the 2000 season. Pacific capitalized on the excitement by producing the first Ken Griffey Jr. card with him in a Cincinnati uniform, making half his cards Mariners and the other half Reds. 

Great card, one of my favorite Griffey cards. 

On to the other things I cover in my set posts........

Favorite Cardinals Card 

It's really hard to pick out the "best" cards from this set. They are slightly devoid of personality, but I decided to go with Fernando Tatis. He had a short window of success with the Cardinals and 1999 was his best season. Fernando Sr. went 30 plus home runs, 30 plus doubles, 20 stolen bases, and nearly hit .300 come in with a .298 average. He also walked more than 80 times. It was a really unique stat line, especially for a third baseman and I love seeing those numbers on the back of the card.  

Favorite Former Durham Bulls Player 

McGriff played on the Durham Bulls at the end of his career in 2004. He's one of the few players who is smiling on his posed photograph for this set. I like the happy vibe on this card. I also like that you get McGriff's batting stance in the top right corner. He's got one of the more unique and identifiable stances from the 1990s.  

One more card and we will talk about inserts......

While the 2000 Pacific Aurora set did not have inserts in every pack, they did offer a parallel card per pack. The majority of parallel cards were pinstriped. I know there are people who enjoy these parallel cards, but I am not a huge fan. 

Perhaps if my favorite team wore pinstripes, I would feel differently. Looks kind of weird on a Cardinals card, but it makes sense and looks good on a Yankees card.......

Inserts 

Now we get to the good stuff with Pacific Aurora. The inserts.  

The most basic insert was the "Pennant Fever". When the Aurora product first started in 1998, these were the inserts that generally came as the per-pack. Pacific continued this insert again in 1999 and 2000. Based on the number in my collection, I would guess that a box typically came with 3 or 4 of these cards. The foil along the bottom of the card is nice, but this isn't even the close to the best thing in this set.  

Let's get serious.  

Pacific made some great cards involving nets in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Yes, nets. You'd think that might not work for baseball, but sounds like a great concept for a basketball insert. What has nets on a baseball diamond? Dugouts and foul poles. The good people at Pacific employed some creative people who made great cards like this Shawn Green, which is a Dugout Net card.....

It's not a game-used card or anything, just a die-cut card with the cut-out section being filled in with netting. I am not sure the scan does the card justice, but these are some of the best inserts from this era. The one draw back for these cards is that they were thicker and would chip along the bottom. Check out the white around the bottom of the net.  

Most of the cards in this insert set are available online for less than $5, which reminds me that I have not done a set project in a long time. More of these might be making an appearance in this space in the near future.  

Last one for this set.  

I love that Dugout set with the die-cut space for the netting, but the Styroteach insert with these batting helmets might be even better. These remind me of the Donruss Hard Hats inserts that came out in the mid 1990s. Just a really nice insert card, again I am not sure the scan does this justice. 

Unlike the Dugout set though, these are really pricy on Ebay and COMC. The cheapest cards are around $10 with many being closer to $30 or $40. Not sure I can put together this complete set those prices given the quantity of cards. For now, I am happy with this Barry Bonds card.  

So, how does the 2000 Pacific Aurora set rate?  

I think it's biggest positives are that it has great insert cards and a solid base set. Having the first Reds Griffey cards pumps up the nostalgia factor for me and I am sure others who collected during this time.  When you add in the fact that these were $60 a box for 24 packs, there is a lot of upside here. Obviously, the base card design could be much better, but it's also not horrible. Aurora also has a small checklist with only 150 cards. That means you're only getting 4 to 5 cards of your favorite team.  

I ended up giving the set three Wool E. Bulls for the checklist and set design, everything else was above average with the final rating coming in at 3 1/2 Wool E Bulls.  

You can still find boxes of these cards for less than $100 on Ebay, if you're interested. Given the recent interest in opening old packs of cards and boxes, that's not much of a mark up from the original price. 

Set Appreciation Post #19- 1995 Select Certified

 This week's Set Appreciation Post has a special guest, my six year-old daughter.  

She is a kindergartener who has some strong opinions on life and a love of art work.  Parts of our house are frequently converted into art galleries for whatever art she is working on at the moment. Her art does not always stay on paper though. Sometimes, it appears in other forms.  

For example, after returning home from a trip to Washington, D.C. this spring my computer was covered in sticky notes. Each sticky note was its own piece of art work, but it also somehow formed a larger work.  

The explanation would take several minutes and there would be no baseball cards in this post if I wrote everything she said about the sticky note art work.

She already has some opinions about my baseball cards.  

For example, according to her, my baseball card boxes are all pretty boring because they are plain white. She thinks that I should have the outside of the boxes match the baseball cards that are on the inside. At some point last year, she attempted to decorate the boxes for my autographed cards, which all have the letter "N" scribbled on the outside of them. She had bigger plans that her stopped. According to her, someone wrote on the cards inside the box, so she wrote the first letter of her name on the outside of the box.  

They match and she is willing to add more art to the outside of the boxes.  

I have not allowed her to continue to do her art work on my baseball card boxes, but that did not stop her from doing one final piece of art work on my box holding my copy of the 1995 Select Certified set. The cards are bright and shiny, so the box should match, right?  

Here is the top.  

Here is the front.  

Her median was 1990 Upper Deck team logo stickers.  

Let's talk about the cards. 

Each of us will provide a take on the 1995 Select Certified set.

Here is the basic design of the 1995 Select Certified cards.  

I really like the dark greyscale background behind the color photos, which is something different. I also like the card stock and texture. It's not exactly a thick paper stock, but definitely has a sturdy feel to the card. There is a glossy finish, which I think is interesting on a card that uses a greyscale background. 

My daughter does not like this design and wants to know why a brighter color like purple was not used in the background. She suggests a pattern that you could color in like a coloring book.  

That's actually not a bad idea.  

I love the breakdown of the stats by team on the back of the card. It's like the Bowman cards, but with more color and better graphics. Sure, you get less numbers, but you still get a good sense of how the player faired against each team. Bonds torched the Expos in 1994, which is saying something because they were easily the best team in the National League.  

My daughter likes that Barry Bonds is willing to wear earrings on his baseball card, but thinks at least one team should use a pony or hearts as their logo.  

My favorite card of a former Durham Bulls player in this set is Chipper Jones. His early cards are always fun, looks a little silly here with the huge swing. I will add that the number of former Bulls players in this set is fairly small and the other choices had rather blah looking pictures.

The card did not scan well, but Chipper is actually apart of the Rookie subset in Select Certified and the background of the card is half grey and half gold. That stamp does not exactly show a ton of creativity.  

My daughter also picked out this card for her favorite Durham Bulls player in the set, although her explanation started out with, "Have you ever ate lunch with boys at school?" and ended with "making farting noises".  It took her about two minutes to explain the whole thing, I will let your imagination fill in the middle of the conversation.  

My favorite Cardinals card in the set......

is Bernard Gilkey.  

Several of the Cardinals players are pictured in road uniforms, which are nice, but are also a gray uniform on a dark gray background. I do like the action shot on the front of this card, but also really like the way that the white home uniform with the red helmet and uniform accessories pop on the dark background.

My daughter did not pick a favorite Cardinals card, because "none of them are very nice looking" and added a "No, thank you" when I told her that she needed to pick a Cardinals card. Later in the post she does pick a former Cardinals player card for her favorite overall card from the set.  

Let me off-road a few other things I like about this set, but the little one rejoins the conversation.  

One of the best parts of Select Certified is the Gold Mirror parallels.  

I am generally not a parallel person, but this one is well done. There were a few Gold cards in every box, no serial numbers, and it's the only parallel that came in the product.  Over the years, I have put together the complete set of Cardinals and I am close to having all the former Durham Bulls players. Good looking set of cards.  

If you don't dig the dark background of the base cards, these are a really nice option and they are generally not that expensive compared to the price of other popular 1990s parallels at the moment.  

Moving on.  

Select Certified is a small set with only 135 cards in the set. There were 28 Major League teams in 1995, so there are roughly 4 to 5 cards for each team. Small sets generally tend to stick to the big names on rosters and not stray into many subsets or special cards. Select Certified has a bit of both.  

The Dodgers got a special card for having three players win the Rookie of the Year in a row.  

Eddie Murray also got a special card for collecting his 3,000 hit in 1994.  

Always cool to see these kinds of cards to mark special accomplishments, especially on a small checklist like Select Certified. There are also Rookie Subset cards. I posted one at the top of the post with the Chipper Jones card, but the scan did not do a good job of showing the card.  

Here is another Rookie subset with a picture taken using my phone's camera.  

There are actually some pretty big names in the Rookie subset with Jeter and ARod. A few others including one later in the post.  The Jeter and ARod are not actually rookie cards, but still early cards that are fun to own. You can see the two-toned background a little better on photograph. 

Let's bring the little one back in to finish up the post and talk about our favorite cards.  

My daughter is up first with Mark McGwire.  

She picked this card, because Mark McGwire is the only player in the set with long hair.  

That's it, her whole reason for picking the card. I will add for context that her favorite Disney Princess is Rapunzel, and that she keeps her hair long and it must be styled everyday before she goes to school. I would like to see Mark McGwire rock some bubble braids.  

I went a little different direction for my favorite non-Cardinal, non-Durham Bulls card from this set.  I decided to pick the Hideo Nomo rookie card.  

  

Every year the baseball card world goes crazy of a certain player or two. In 1995, there was Nonomania. Everyone wanted a Hideo Nomo card and this was one of my favorites. A great card from the mid 1990s, I think if I made a list of the best cards from my time in high school, this card would be on the list.  

How does it rank on my list?  

It has been a hot minute since I have done a set appreciation post. The last set I added to my list was the 2001 Donruss set last November. The set was terrible. The 1995 Select Certified set is definitely not terrible. In fact, it's a pretty good set of baseball cards. 

Narrow it down.  Looking at the top half of the sets I have posted, I think it's better than Emotion XL (they are kind of similar though) and the 2017 Heritage Minor League set. Topps TEK feels like the right neighborhood.  I am actually going to give Select Certified the slight nod given its a set that you can actually complete, unlike Topps Tek's 8,100 card craziness.  

19. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

18. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

17. 2001 Donruss 

16. 2000 Topps 

15. 2012 Bowman Platinum 

14. 2000 UD Ionix

13. Topps Lineage   

12. 2002 Bowman 

11. 1988 Donruss 

10. 1995 Emotion XL 

9. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

8. 1998 Topps TEK 

7. 1995 Select Certified 

6. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

5. 2001 Fleer EX 

4. 1979 Kellogg's 

3. 1998 Metal Universe 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

A Venerable Old Card Part 51

I am not a Yankees fan.  I am not going to make some post claiming that Derek Jeter is the greatest shortstop of all-time, nor the greatest modern shortstop.  Still he has been really important to the baseball card hobby and I felt I could take a few minutes to give him a little love on the night the Yankees retire his number 2.  Specifically I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about my favorite Derek Jeter rookie card.

I really liked the Stadium Club cards back in the early 1990s.  Upper Deck was probably my favorite of the glossy "premium" cards from that era, but Stadium Club was not far behind.  At the time the Stadium Club Murphy and Stadium Club Dome sets were released they were some what of an oddity.  A boxed set in a plastic stadium.  The guy at my local card shop at the time thought that they were pretty ridiculous.  I don't remember the conversation when I picked up the Murphy set, but I got a long talk about how the Dome set was "gimmicky" with filled with "senior photos in their mom's backyard" when I bought a copy during college.

I somewhat agreed with him.  I actually don't have my box for either one of the sets.  I broke them both and at some point tossed the box.  Given the number of singles from the set floating around I don't feel too bad being without the boxes.

This is what it looked like....thank you Ebay.....

The Jeter card didn't feature him wearing a cool high school or American Legion uniform like Shawn Green.....

or making an fashion statement straight out of a Bell Biv DeVoe video like Ozzie Timmons.....

It's still easily my favorite Jeter rookie card and probably my top overall Jeter card in my collection.  Not that I go out of my way for his baseball cards, but I feel like this card is one of the most iconic 1990s baseball cards.  It's not the Griffey rookie card, but if I made a list I would have it in my top 10.  

Complete Set: 2000 Fleer Gamers

There is a reason that several of the card companies from the card boom of the late 90s and early 2000s are bankrupt and out of business.  The main reason was probably the fact that the companies competed with each other, but also with themselves.  There is only so much money that collectors spend on cards each year, as much as we would all love an unlimited budget, and Fleer, Donruss, Upper Deck, and Topps pumped out an overabundance of products.  There were products that were definite hits and a few flops along the way too.  There were also a few card products that flew under the radar.  The Fleer Gamers set is one of those sets that has gotten a little bit better and stronger with age.

2000 Fleer Gamers Jose Canseco 

First, the base set is nothing that great.  It's pretty typical of a Fleer release from this era and that is all I can really say about the design.  There are 120 total cards in the set, so it's not too difficult to track down the complete set with a box and a little help.  In fact, the box prices are one of the best things about this set.  Back in 2000, this set was one of way too many released by Fleer.  Of course, it was deemed a flop and many shops and Ebay sellers have boxes of Fleer Gamers on the cheap.  With a mediocre base set why would one care to roll the dice on a $30-$40 box of wax?  Inserts, Relics, and Autographs. 

2000 Fleer Gamers Cal Ripken Cal To Greatness 

Let's start with the inserts.  They are not very Fleer like in some regards.  There are die-cuts that look more like something that Pacific would put out on the market, but if nothing else there is the stand-by Cal Ripken insert set which yields two to three cards per box.  The Cal to Greatness set is pretty popular and the cards in the set hover around $5 on Ebay.  Three of these cards alone can pay for half of your box before you pull anything else.

2000 Fleer Gamers Lumber Ray Lankford Bat Card

The relic cards look like your typical late 90s relic set, small relic, not so great player card that would sell on Ebay for $2.  Almost not worth buying when you include shipping, except Fleer actually did a few things right with this relic set that most sets in the card boom era failed miserably with.  First, the list of players included in the relic set (all bat pieces) includes plenty of Hall of Famers, but also a lot of solid players with little to no relic exposure.  I could use Ray Lankford as my example, of a player with no relic cards outside of this set, and an above average Major League resume.  There is also a relic card for ESPN announcer Chris Singleton which is also his only relic card.  Of course there are the usual suspects of good players, average players, with a few Hall of Famers sprinkled into the mix.  Which leads me to my second point.  

The set is named Lumbers, the relic cards are all bats (notice a theme) and yet the relic cards are only planted two per case, or one every box and a half.  If Topps put out a set like this there would be a bat card in every pack.  The result of short-printing unique relic cards is directly reflected by the price that collectors pay for these cards on the secondary market.  Excluding a $0.99 bat card of Royals prospect-flop Carlos Febles, almost every bat card from this set is over $5 on Ebay with star players over $10 and Hall of Famers north of that point.  But wait, there's more....

2000 Fleer Gamers Lumber Shawn Green Bat/Auto 

To make this set a little bit sweeter Fleer also put in signed (on-card) versions of the bat cards.  The autographs were seeded at about one per ten boxes, or one per case and a half.  Long odds for an autograph.  The checklist includes Derek Jeter and Robert Alomar as the Hall of Famers included, but also features Rafael Palmeiro, Paul Konerko, Sean Casey, and ARod.  The autographs tend to fetch a pretty good price with most commons reach at least $20 on the secondary market.

Overall, I am aware that the base set is not that appealing, but if you are looking to pick up a cheap box and find something cool (and enjoy opening some wax) then this is a great product to look into picking up.  Boxes are easy to find on Ebay and the right hit could add a great card to your collection, or give you a nice trade chip to pick up something else for your collection.

My Two Cents on Scrubbing Charlie Hustle

Much has been made this week surrounding a Yahoo Sports Blog regarding the fact that Topps has scrubbed Pete Rose off of their baseball cards.  To summarize: Topps recently issued the 2013 Topps Series cards.  On the back of each players cards there is a line in between their personal information and career stats which highlights a career chase statistic showing the distance the featured player is away from a great baseball milestone.

In particular, much as been made out of the cards that highlight the distance players are away from the all time hits record.  The A.J. Pierzynski card shows that he is 2,611 hits away from the record.  However, other cards featuring other records name the player that holds the record.

For example, Matt Holliday is 533 home runs away from Barry Bonds all-time home run record.  Throughout the set pitchers are compared to Cy Young's win total and Nolan Ryan's strikeout record.  Hitters are compared to Bonds, Tris Speaker, Rickey Henderson, and other all-time career holders.  It appears that Rose was deliberately snubbed by Topps.  However, the article does point out a card that Rose appears on:

The 2006 Topps Update set features a Shawn Green card with a Pete Rose cartoon in the upper left hand corner.  This card has lead many collectors to the conclusion that the decision to snub Pete Rose has been a recent decision.  However, I think that this card is more likely a product of lax quality control on the part of Topps.  Let's face it, quality control and attention to detail happens some of the time at Topps, but not all of the time.  My guess is that the cartoon on the back of the Shawn Green card simply slipped through the cracks.

Topps has not issued a single Pete Rose card since he was banned from baseball.  His last regular issue card was this 1989 Topps card.  Since this card, they have not produced one single card of the all-time hits leader.  Since Rose is banned from Major League Baseball and they issue a license to Topps to print and manufacture baseball cards, it's easy to see why the Reds great has been absent for the past 24 years.  Topps ability to keep and maintain their license would probably take a turn for the worst if the issued a Pete Rose card.  They are kind of walking on egg shells.  It also hasn't stopped other companies and Pete Rose from still cashing in on his name.

Leaf and Rose have been issuing a set of cards together for the past several years.  The cards are all about Pete and feature tons of autographs.  Frankly, the move has helped Leaf stay afloat without having a full licensing agreement, you can imagine it will never get one now, but cheapened the signature of Pete Rose.  This card can be found for around $25 or less on Ebay.  Way cheaper than standing in line to get Pete to sign something.  

Really, the whole Pete Rose thing is awkward and weird at this point.  After the Pete Rose gambling investigation ended he was banned from baseball and the former commissioner of baseball, Bart Giamatti died shortly afterwards of a heart attack.  Many blamed Rose.  Rose on the other hand has gone into walking a bipolar line between thumbing his nose at Major League Baseball and pleading with Bud Selig for reinstatement.  Really, at some point I think that Rose will be recognized by Major League baseball and be reinstated.  Even Elect to the Hall of Fame.  However, I also am not going to be surprised if Major League Baseball does not let Rose get to see himself in the Hall of Fame.  Until then most in baseball will pretend that Rose never played, while others will tip toe around the issue.  I can't really blame Topps for dodging the Pete Rose name on the back of their cards this year, but perhaps they could find a subtle way to give Charlie Hustle a shout out.  The Reds walk this line every year.  Do you see the nod to Charlie Hustle in this picture?  

30 Year Top 50: 1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome

48th on my list is the 1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome set.  This was an interesting set from the day that it hit the stores back in the spring of 1992.  Why?  The design of the cards is actually the same as the 1991 Topps Stadium Club set and Topps had originally designated the set as a 1991 release.  Now, if you go back, even just a few years, this used to be a very common practice.  The calendar year would change and card companies would post date the card release back a few weeks.  

Why didn't it work in the case of the Stadium Club Dome?  Well, Topps had released their 1992 Stadium Club product in January of that year and this 1991 release followed it by about eight weeks.  Card collectors will argue over all sorts of things, but the Stadium Club Dome set does not really have an argument for being a 1991 release other than the fact that it shares a design with the 1991 Stadium Club base set.  

Now, there were more interesting things about the set other than it's release date.  This set also had cool packaging, cool rookies, and one of the biggest flops in all of baseball draft history.  So, let's start with the easy stuff first.  The product was sold as a set and came in a cool box that was in the shape of the Toronto SkyDome.  It may be a large concrete dump right now, but in 1991 it was new, modern, and incredible.  

1992 Stadium Club Dome Toronto SkyDome Set Box

The other cool part of this release was the rookie cards.  The set was comprised solely of the 1991 American and National League All-Stars, the USA Baseball team, and a whole bundle of draft picks.  At the time of the sets release there were three important rookie cards in the set.  The two that stayed relevant the longest were the Manny Ramirez and Shawn Green rookies.  Manny Ramirez's most important rookie card is the 1992 Bowman and Green is a toss up between anything released in 1992.  There is also an early Jason Giambi card in the set which matches his 1991 Topps Traded set card.  

1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome Manny Ramirez 

1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome Shawn Green 

The hottest rookie card at the time of this sets release actually belonged to a Yankees draft pick from my adopted home state of North Carolina.  Brien Taylor was the first selection in the 1991 draft.  He was immediately labeled a can't miss prospect and people snatched up his cards.  Out of high school, Taylor threw in the high 90s and Scott Boras said that he was the best high school pitcher he had ever seen.  He actually started out strong in the minors, but was injured in a fight during the off-season while he was out with his brother at a bar.  During the fight Taylor damaged his shoulder and was never the same player.  He eventually became the second first over all draft pick not to reach the majors.  

1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome Brien Taylor 

His cards are worth pocket change now, but I still really enjoy look at this card from time to time.  It still amazes me how much money and time people pour into finding cards of minor leaguers when there are just as many who have gone the way of Brien Taylor and not Mike Trout. 

Like the 1992 Stadium Club Dome set?  Not appearing in my countdown is the 1990 Fleer set.  Just like the 1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome set, this release has some very solid rookies.  In fact, one could argue that the rookies in the 1990 Fleer Set are better than the 1992 Stadium Club Dome set.  The rookies included: Sammy Sosa, Frank Thomas, and Juan Gonzalez.  Not too shabby.  Also, another huge flop.  During the 1990 season, the Yankees used Kevin Maas to replace the often injured Don Mattingly in the lineup.  Maas went on to hit 21 home runs in what amount to about a half of season.  Collectors went crazy for Maas cards, but luckily he had a card in almost every 1990 set.  Plus, the next season he only hit 23 home runs playing full time.  Maas continued to decline and spent his last few years bouncing around from team to team.  

1990 Fleer George Canale/Kevin Maas 

1999 Pacific Revolution Jeff Bagwell Foul Pole

I really love some of the inserts from the late 90's Pacific sets.  Pacific was definitely part of the over abundance of cards at that time, but they were at least creative with their card set designs.  Especially some of the inserts.  There are plenty of cool die-cuts and designs within the old Pacific sets which are sadly lacking from the hobby today.  Case in point is this gem which I picked up for $2 recently.

1999 Pacific Revolution Jeff Bagwell Foul Pole 

The net card was used an insert in several different Pacific sets over the years, but the 1999 Revolution set was the first.  Pacific used the same insert in the 2000 Revolution set and also added a Dugout Net card to the 2000 Aurora release, as seen below.  

2000 Pacific Aurora Shawn Green Dugout Views Net Fusions

Note to Topps employees: Notice the player on the card has been traded, but there is not a bad airbrush of a Dodgers jersey.