The Lost Box of Total Awesomeness - Digging Deeper

From the previous post's comments:

What is truly ASTONISHING about this box?
They are all players:
Who no one but Braves fans care about. Come on man! I had to wait ten years for Smoltzie in a polo shirt? Where are the SP to 100,000 cards?

All I have to say is... just be patient with me here. This box is like the Indiana Jones movie. Not the new one with the old man running around, the FIRST one. The GOOD one. My dear readers, you are Indy and Karaoke Smoltz is the big round boulder chasing you after you grab the idol. You're going to be put through a whole lot of crap throughout this entire box. You'll have to deal with snakes, and Marcus Brody, and dudes with swords, and some chick tagging along, and a bald dude standing in front of a plane, and a truck convoy chasing you, and horses running at cliffs and and German U-Boats and stuff. Or at least the cardboard versions of each. But I promise you, I swear to you... YOU WILL GET TO SEE NAZIS MELTING BEFORE THIS BOX IS DONE. I do not say this lightly either. When I promise melting nazis, you will get melting nazis. I need to take you though the journey of the entire box though.

That being said, the next little bit is more Temple of Doom than Last Crusade. One Hundred and sixty nine Topps cards from 1988-1993. Every last one of them Braves or at least were on the Braves at some point in time. The Braves spam ends here thankfully, although I'm not saying things necessarily get better anytime soon. I more or less have everything sorted out by year so I'll go one year at a time and list the best cards. I'll also post some non-Brave cards so the Atlanta haters have something to look at too.

1988 Topps (1)
361 Greg Maddux

Only one '88 Topps card, but it's Maddog's first Topps card so jackpot! I've opened plenty of blasters where the big hit wasn't as good as this.

1989 Topps (24)
20 Steve Bedrosian
634 Marvelous Marvin Freeman
674 Otis Nixon
735 Fred McGriff
784 Steve Avery RC

The Braves in this lot are atrocious, much like the '88 team they came from. Actually, other than the ones listed they're all pretty bad. Doyle Alexander, Jody Davis, Dave Gallagher, Roberto Kelly and Jeff Reardon. Star-studded, to be sure. Except for Marvin Freeman, he rules. He also holds the record for "worst Wikipedia page ever" thanks to some clone reminiscing about an interview from the mid 90's.

1990 Topps (40)
205 Mark Davis
252 Otis Nixon
310 Steve Bedrosian
581 Ken Griffey
725 Terry Pendleton

Another dismal group from a bad set here. Highlights include: Nick Esasky, Damaso Garcia, Brad Komminsk and Andres Thomas. Ouch. It was really hard picking a top five out of this group, Mark Davis made the cut due to his Cy Young performance in '89. At least there's a Ken Griffey card in here to satisfy the Reds fans out there.

1991 Topps (39)
283 Marquis Grissom
351 Joe Torre
545 Dale Murphy
612 Steve Lyons
725 Ron Gant

Getting better but still a lot of Paul Maraks and Oddibe McDowells in here. The concept of "any Brave is a good Brave" often breaks down in practice. I had to throw in a scan of Psycho for the hell of it.

1992 Topps (43)
50 Ken Griffey Jr.
245 John Smoltz
549 Joe Torre
580 Greg Maddux
689 Mark Lemke

Now that's the ticket. Four future Hall of Famers in this little pile of Braves. Admittedly, I have no idea what Griffey Jr. is doing in here. Perhaps wishful thinking on my part or maybe he's keeping his dad company. Plus the first appearance of Lemmer!

1993 Topps (23)
30 Fred McGriff
116 Mark Lemke
170 David Justice
280 Tom Glavine
331 Kenny Lofton

Finishing up with the '93 set. This is almost all Braves which is good. When I first put these stacks together I was probably rooting through doubles piles for Braves to put into team sets. This is fortunate. My Braves sets from 1909-1987 are really well organized to the point where I printed out scans of cards I didn't have to put in the pages until I could find the card. Everything after '88 though is a disaster. My reasoning was I have the sets anyway, I'll put them in sheets later. No less than 38 cards finally made it into the binder today. After ten long years! I know, nobody gives a flip about my Braves binder. This is a blog, remember... it's my job to describe in excruciating detail minutia of my life that absolutely no one cares about. You have to check a little box saying you'll do so when you sign up for Blogger or they won't let you join.

Ok, so this post sucked. This was kind of like the part in the movie where Indiana is teaching at the college and there's a lot of talky stuff to set up the plot. Is that scene from Ark or the Last Crusade? I just sort of cut those movies together in one big film of distilled awesome, much like the rest of this box. Trust me, it does get better folks. There's probably less than a dozen Braves left since I segregated them all like this. The two really super awesome parts (think the one nazi choosing unwisely and getting all old and disintegrating for one pile and the crazy nazi opening the ark and getting all melty and going aaaaaah like this for the other pile) have absolutely no Braves at all and will be posted soon enough and then you'll all agree of the awesome. Up next: more old Topps! Ok so it will take a little time to reach the awesome.