Dime Box Dozen - Manny & Nomah

Recently I was the recipient of a very generous bubble mailer stuffed with wonderful cardboard, courtesy of my buddy Nick at Dime Boxes.  In fact, it was so generous that the sheer volume of cards (combined with the volume in another package that arrived around the same time) just crushed my ability to stay caught up.

So, instead of trying to deal with all 100+ cards at once and inevitably delaying this even longer, I decided to feature just the first dozen tonight.  I'll get to the rest soon, in fact I scanned the majority of them last night, but for today here are the first twelve...

Coming out strong with a Hawk from Upper Deck's 1994 "Fun Pack" release.  I always liked these, and even more so the Topps Kids set; a nice change of pace that was truly meant to appeal to kid collectors.

This is an odd one, from the Trading Card History insert Topps had in their flagship release about a decade or so ago.  I honestly don't recognize the set that this one's paying tribute to, although it looks pre-war.  No time to look any further into it tonight!

This package contained many firsts for my collection, including my first 2018 Bowman card in the form of this Andrew Benintendi.  I like it, I guess.  It's about what I'd expect from Bowman.  Andrew's currently in the "final man" voting for the 2018 All-Star Game.  I'd love to see him make it, he certainly deserves it with the numbers he's posted this year and you get the feeling that it would mean a tremendous deal to him.

If I were to take on the insane task of ranking all of the baseball card sets released in the 1990s, I guarantee you that 1994 Topps Stadium Club would be inside the top 20 for the entire decade.  I've always adored this set, largely because it was released when I was at the very impressionable age of 11 and I have fond memories of ripping packs of this back then.

In this mailing Nick included not only the base card of Roger Clemens...

...but also the Golden Rainbow parallel!  I'm not exaggerating in the least when I say that these two were among my favorites in the entire package from Nick.  Great stuff.

This "Onyx Extreme" insert is from the 2000 Stadium Club set.  It's not the last Nomar you'll see tonight.  Fine by me.

Here's another one from the turn of the century, a very busy insert from Pacific Aurora.  Nomar is currently tied for 6th place for most cards in my baseball collection (with Nolan Ryan).  Of course, I still have a ton of cards to enter into TCDB before I can say with any certainty who really leads in my collection, but at this stage he's within the top 10 anyway.

Here's another one that was new to me.  This is a mini-sized card from 2003 Topps Opening Day.  I found out it's actually a sticker.  Go figure.

Another Nomar, a nice defensive shot here from Fleer Ultra.

Apparently there were Home and Away versions of these inserts from 2005 Leaf.  Not very hard to discern which one we have here.

Another thing I do not recall having seen before...2007 Topps 1st Edition?  Were these inserts?  Some sort of separate set?  I got back into the hobby in 2007 and I have no memory of these whatsoever.

Another Manny brings us to a dozen cards, so we'll stop here.  I needed every single one of these for my Red Sox collection.  Best of all, I've got a few more posts of equally solid Red Sox material to come from this package.  Thanks Nick!!!