Ryan Barone (@ballcardgenius, Card Expert) is a lifelong member of the hobby. He has been quoted in PSA Magazine, and his content has regularly been mentioned in “Quick Rips” (the Topps RIPPED Newsletter) and across other hobby publications. hello@ballcardgenius.com; Last Time Ago LLC dba Ballcard Genius.
Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As I am a part of the eBay Partner Network and other programs, if you follow these links and make a purchase, I’ll receive commission. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Baseball cards are a lot of things to a lot of different people. But did you know there are a number of different baseball ornament cards out there? While Topps Holiday might not be the traditional collector’s first choice of card, it does provide festive fun, much of which comes in the form of ornament die cut cards.
Cool thing is, baseball card ornaments were a thing long before Topps Holiday was a set!
Check out the many different options available for you and your tree this holiday season:
2000 Pacific Ornaments
First and best in my opinion, the late 90s and early 00s had no filter when it came to snazzy shine, which meant an ornament-themed baseball card was the perfect insert for card collectors old and young.
Besides the overall look and sparkle, the thing I love about the Pacific ornaments is that the checklist comes in different shapes and sizes: bulbs, Christmas trees, wreaths, bells, and stockings.
There are 20 cards in total, including everyone you’d expect, from Griffey Jr. to Greg Maddux.
2001 Pacific Ornaments
A double-dose of Christmas? Sign me up! Now, I can’t say the 2001 ornament cards from Pacific are that different from 2000, but Christmas is all about tradition anyway, right?
Besides a slightly-modified design, the 2001 checklist was bursting with 24 players—more than enough to cover your own mini Christmas tree. (The snowman design might have also been new for 2001.)
2020 Topps Holiday
Sadly, Pacific stopped producing baseball cards after 2001, and while the ornament card was an obvious casualty, the company had always been praised for its innovative designs.
20 years later though, trees have no reason to be bare any longer as Topps more or less revived the baseball card ornament insert when the company put the design into its 2020 Holiday product.
These new die-cut inserts are oversized “box toppers” and thus come one per box. (Might be the only time you get away with hanging one to this guy!). 20 cards in total.
2021-2023 Topps Holiday
If you want to stop reading right here and only look at the pictures, you’ll probably get just as much out of the rest of this blog post had you kept on reading.
Instead of snowy bulbs, 2021 offered green stars (Santa hats still present—did they make these things into relic cards at any point).
2022 was back with Christmas Trees, and 2023 went back to rounded, but closer to a snowflake formation.
