Box Break: 1998 Pinnacle Zenith

After reading dayf’s great 1998 Zenith pack break, I knew that I had to break open a box of this myself.  I’ve always been a huge fan of Pinnacle and all of their innovations.  I’ve used a can opener to get to Pinnacle cards in the past so why not pull out a box cutter and free some cards that way.

The first thing that I noticed is that my large 5” x 7” cards weren’t in the greatest of shape.  A lot of them had bent corners or nicks in the side.  It made me feel better about the fact that I was planning on cutting all of these open.

As I opened the box, I set aside the players that I collect as well as the Impulse silver parallels.  I pulled two Mike Piazzas which will be going into my collection.  I had 4 Impulse parallels of Smoltz, Mo Vaughn, Tony Gwynn and Lou Collier.  I got 39 different jumbo cards + 4 Impulse + 10 doubles and triples (I pulled three Mondesi jumbos) = 53 cards.  Yep, one of my packs only contained 2 cards instead of three leaving me a card short.  My bad luck spans decades.

Here’s a jumbo card next to a regular sized card that you find inside.  One nice thing is that there are different pictures used on the two cards.  Pinnacle could have been lazy and used the same picture on both cards.

The smaller Thomas pictured here is a Z Silver parallel.  I pulled Thomas, Edgar Martinez, Derrek Lee, Andy Pettitte and another Frank Thomas.  Collating the large cards is one thing, but it looks like collating the smaller cards wasn’t easy as you’re about to read.

I got 8 inserts in the smaller cards along with 43 base cards and 2 cards still living inside of the Piazzas.  Of the 43 base cards, there were 34 different cards.  I think there are 100 cards in the set so that’s right around a third of the set.  I don’t see too many people chasing this set by busting open packs and jumbo cards.  I ended up with 4 Cal Ripkens out of this box.  I was going to keep the Impulse jumbos unopened and that would have been wise since 3 out of the 4 cards contained a Cal.  If someone were to open a bunch of packs, there is one benefit.

The Epix cards that Pinnacle inserted across its brands in 1998 are great looking cards.  There were Epix Play, Game, Season, Moment and All-Star Moment cards in the following colors: Orange, Purple and Emerald.  I’m a sucker for just about anything Dufex and naturally I love these cards.

Right here we’ve got a Paul Molitor Orange Game.  Game is the second easiest Epix set to pull and Orange is the easiest color.

Here’s an insert of Big Mac.  The design on the Play cards is my favorite.  This Orange Play is the easiest card to pull.

My final Epix is of Roger Clemens.  These Purple cards look sharp.  I’m definitely going to have to track down the Purple Piazzas for my collection.  I wasn’t lucky enough to pull an Emerald like dayf was and if I had pulled an Emerald Piazza I would be doing cartwheels.  I love the Epix cards and have already picked up a few of the Piazzas that were on CheckOutMyCards.com.

If anyone out there is interested in cards from this set for your team or player collections, let me know what you’re looking for and I’ll tell you what I’ve got.  The jumbo cards have a slit across the top on the back, but look perfect on the front.  They’re perfect for displaying.  I’ll trade the Epix cards that I have for Piazza Epix cards that I don’t yet have.

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