Getting Jack'd from across the pond

John (that's JackPlumstead to you, mister!) from merry ol' England sent me a package of cards! There were more than 50 cards in the envelope! Wahoo!! I decided to scan in two sets of nine cards rather than the whole package. I chose each grouping for a particular theme:

First up, we have a Hardball Heroes Albery Belle, a silver Topps Total Scott Stewart, and a Topps Opening Day Omar Vizquel.  Okay, it's generally not a good idea to forget what the theme was on your opening card display, but, well, I don't remember what I was going for here... Enjoy anyway:

Next up, we have Ken Griffey Jr UD "For Promotional Use Only," Carlos Baerga, and Jeff Treadway.  I chose these for the action in the cards!  I like cards featuring the players in the middle of doing something, even if you can't tell just what Junior is doing there.  John also remember that I have I penchant for "PROMO" cards (which is how I ended up with a Mariner in a stack of Tribers):

Next up, I went for SHINY!  We've got a Sizemore Topps Attax silver foil card, Manny Ramirez Big Bats with VERY shiny gold foil, and an Albert Belle "You Crash the Game" Silver Set:

This next set includes a very shiny purple card of Manny Ramirez (Fleer Ultra), a Topps sticker of Joe Carter, and a Goodwin Champions Grady Sizemore.  I chose these for two reasons: First, they were actually the first three cards, and second because they are all looking to the right.  Who decides these things?

The last set includes Junior Ortiz, Grady Sizemore/Travis Hafner, and Charles Nagy.  I picked the Ortiz because he has the same look on his face that I would have if I were in his shoes!  The Sizemore/Hafner is a team checklist.  Do they still make team checklists?  I loved the old cards that had the checkboxes on them.  Of course, you don't see that much (if at all) anymore because writing on one's cards depletes the "value" of the card.  Yeah, back when I was a kid, we didn't care about that stuff.  Heck, we even GLUED our cards into spiral notebooks! 

The Nagy is one of my all-time favorite cards.  I love the retro uniform on him and he has the look of someone that played back in the era of the uniform he's sporting.  I remember the first time I saw the card, I did a double-take, thinking I had pulled some kind of blast from the past: