Thank You Bulldog

When Bulldog of Nothing If Not Random said that he had some cards for me, I was thinking, at most one of the one hundred or two hundred count storage boxes. Instead, yesterday, this monster eight hundred count storage box arrives at my doorstep filled to the brim with White Sox cards and an '88 Donruss card of Mel Hall. If I were playing Sox Or No Sox, I'd say it was a narrowly avoided trap card, but Mel was three and a half seasons removed from his time with the Cubs by 1988.

Out of the box flowed the stuff that my childhood dreams were made of. A vast array of White Sox cards covering 1982 through 2019, with a few late '90s years not represented. Those are the years I didn't buy any packs! It was like this box came out of my house!

The first act I did was sort through the box and separate everything into years for the most recent cards and decades for the older ones. I'd break those down into years later, but I ran out of space. TV trays don't hold as much as they used to.

This actually played very well incorporating into a larger project I've been working on. I separated a stack of cards that needed the same treatment into those piles and I was off, furiously working cards I lacked into my collection and organizing doubles.

I lost track at the amount of times I smiled and actually called out players names with giddy delight. From the Frank Thomases to the Jim Essians. The Chris Sales to the Rusty Kuntzes. It was a joy to handle each card. 1990 Upper Deck had a much different feel than later Upper Deck cards. It whisked me away to buying packs of 1990 Upper Deck from Gennaro's, a local drug store back then, which has since shunned pharmaceuticals and turned into a liquor store. I would go there for comic books, their awesome selection of candy, Garbage Pail Kids and baseball cards. It used to be a one stop shop for me.

Carlton Fisk, Luis Robert, Brent Lillibridge, Kevin Hickey, Greg Luzinski, Albert Belle, Robin Ventura, Bobby Thigpen... all flooding my mind with memories from grade school to last month. This was nostalgic by design. The best thing was that among all the great memories, there were cards that I needed for my collection.

Thank you, Bulldog! I had a blast with this box! I can't thank you enough.