You've Got Mail #70: A Cracked Bat

This is a box.

It is a simple thing. It's rectangular in shape, white, and made of cardboard. Boxes come in many shapes in sizes, large for moving and small to hold papers and miscellaneous things. This particular box was made to hold cards, 330 of them to be exact (at least that's what it claims on the bottom) and was sent to me by Julie of A Cracked Bat because I won one of her recent "disCARD" drawings.

Here are the contents of the box (minus one card that was too big for the photo).

Quite impressive, wouldn't you say? There were cards from all sorts of years and sets, a definite mixed bag ... err, box ... if there ever was one. Here are some of the highlights. Fair warning, since there's so much to go through, it'll be mostly pictures and not a lot of text.

First off, a bunch of miscellaneous stuff...

Right on top was this, a graded 1996 Topps Sean Casey card. 

Then there was this, a 1980 Kellogg's George Foster! That's two awesome cards right off the bat. 

An Eric Davis pop-up card? Sure, why not.

What? A 1960 Brooks Lawrence card? This was completely unexpected and cool at the same time!

Probably two of my favorite cards of the box, these Tales From the Crypt cards. I love horror movie and horror host stuff like this. I'm a regular watcher of Svengoolie on MeTV Saturday nights and now I'm think I need to go back and watch Tales From the Crypt, since I never saw them during their original airing since I never had HBO as a kid. As a matter of fact, as you're reading this, I've put in a request for the entire series from the local library.

Ok, that's all the miscellaneous stuff. Now for the rest of the highlights of the box, going by decade. First, the 90s.

There were lots of shiny cards in the box and really gave a boost to my "shiny card" side collection. The Frank Thomas card scanned like crap but believe me, it's a really cool card in person.

Two cards from the 1994 Donruss Special Edition Gold, a parallel set of the 1994 Donruss main set.

On the far right is Jose Canseco as a Tampa Bay Devil Ray. I'd forgotten about his stint down in Tampa so it's definitely a pretty neat card. 

1997 Bowman Chrome? Yes please.

These two really cool Reds cards close out the 90s. I really, really like the Hal Morris card.

Starting the 2000s by going back to the 70s. These are from the Upper Deck Decade 1970s set. I'd like to find more cards from this but trying to find singles in dime boxes is like trying to find needles in a haystack.

Some 2001 SPX featuring Ray Durham, Phil Nevin, Roberto Alomar, and Carlos Beltran.

Some cool shiny Reds including a really cool Bowman's Best Barry Larkin card.

Finally, some 2005 Diamond Kings. One thing I find interesting here is that Orlando Cabrera shows him in an Expos uniform and lists the team as the Washington Nationals.

Now, moving on to more recent cards.

Some really neat random cards. I was a big fan of the Panini Contenders set when it came out and I wished they would have released it as a standalone product last year. Oh well, there's always this year (hopefully).

Of course there was some 2017 Flagship thrown in.

Speaking of 2017, you can't go wrong with Gypsy Queen.

These are the first of the hand-drawn art cards from Gypsy Queen this year and they are just absolutely tremendous. They remind me of the old Diamond Kings cards from back in the day and I'm sure many other feel the same way.

I'm not a big purchaser of Bowman but I did buy one of those 3-pack "value packs" last year. These were by far my favorite part of Bowman last year and to get all of these (plus a Bernie Williams that isn't pictured) was a treat.

Next, here's a batch of cards from the 2015 Topps Heritage '51 game set.

Some really awesome numbered cards, including one from Topps Tribute. 

And finally, I'll close out the box with some random, shiny Reds and a Sal Romano Bowman card. 

There were a ton of cards I didn't picture that were just as cool as the ones I showed here. A big thank you goes to Julie for sending this over. I definitely recommend entering one of her giveaway drawings as there's a good chance you'll win something tailored to your wants and needs, just like I did here.