WWE Undisputed Autos from The Puro Central Shop

This will probably be a pretty short post, as my kids brought home a cold a few days ago, and it finally caught up with me. I will be attempting to go to bed early tonight in an effort to recover, as I don't really have time right now to be sick. I have a lot to get done before this weekend, when I travel to Portland, Oregon, for some training. This is one week when I'd be grateful for a few extra hours per day to get everything taken care of at the office.

I picked up a couple of 2016 WWE Undisputed autographs from one of my favorite wrestling shops, The Puro Central Shop. They are closed right now because the owner is moving after a job change, but eventually that link will take you to their storefront. Usually I buy Japanese wrestling stuff from them, but I kind of started a Nia Jax wrestler collection and this was the right card at the right price. I actually think I bought these from their eBay store, but it's all the same folks. The Nia Jax autograph is a Bronze parallel, numbered # 35 / 99. I was looking for a wrestler outside of Bayley to collect, because I can't afford to collect Bayley, and I pulled Nia Jax hit from a blaster of Divas Revolution and figured I might as well go that route. I've watched a few of her matches, mostly between her and Bayley. I think she could stand to work on her mic skills a bit, but that's true of most wrestlers. As far as wrestling pedigree, she's related to Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, the Usos, and Roman Reigns.

I honestly don't know much of anything about Big E, but his picture on this card makes me happy, so I bought it. Okay, I went and watched some New Day (Big E's team) stuff. It was pretty entertaining to me. I don't know if I will seek out more stuff, but I am glad I got a copy of this card. It is the Silver parallel, numbered # 47 / 50.

That's all for today. I am approaching my self-imposed bedtime for tonight and there are still things to do, so I had better get out of here.

Members of the Club

Today is a scheduled day off for me (we work 9-hour days instead of 8-hour days so we get a day off every two weeks), and I've been trying to stay busy doing productive things instead of vegging out at my computer all day. It's gone pretty well, I guess. The current project is moving wargaming miniatures and LEGO kits into the attic so I have room to sort and organize my comic book and trading card collections. The other stuff will eventually come back out of the attic, but right now I need the space and those are the easiest things to move. All the packing and climbing around has kind of tuckered me out, but that's okay. It's good to be making progress. With all of the clutter in the basement, it's hard for me to enjoy any of my hobbies to any great extent.

I've picked up a couple more Members Only parallels from 2014 Topps Stadium Club over the last couple of months. With a rumored print run of less than ten each, they are pretty rare, but I've managed to acquire a couple dozen of them. Jeff Samardzija only spent half a season with the A's, moving on to the White Sox in 2015 and the Giants for 2016. He was recently announced as the Giants' fourth starter for 2017. I was kind of surprised to see that last year was his first season above .500 as a starter (he went 8-4 as a reliever for the Cubs in 2011), although I know pitcher wins are kind of an empty statistic. It seems like he had bad luck during his best statistical season in 2014, going 2-7 in the first half for the Cubs in spite of a 2.83 ERA across 17 starts, and then 5-6 in the second half for Oakland in spite of a 3.14 ERA over 16 starts. I guess the takeaway is that even a good pitcher needs run support.

Marcus Stroman made his big-league debut in 2014, and did pretty well for himself. He missed most of 2015 with an ACL injury, but came back for four starts at the end of the year, plus a few starts in the playoffs. His numbers dipped in 2016, but he is still the probable #3 starter for the Blue Jays this season.

I grabbed both of these cards from eBay on different occasions. Outside of the superstars, these tend to fly under the radar, as they aren't serially-numbered and don't stand out much. The only distinction between them and the base cards is the little foil Members Only stamp.

A High-End One of One for the Daytona 500

Today is the day of the Daytona 500, the big event that kicks off the NASCAR season. I figured I'd better roll out a big card to mark the event, and I think I've got just the thing.

This relic card comes from the 2016 Panini National Treasures Racing set, the first real high-end racing product to come out of Panini's acquisition of the NASCAR license. It's got a nice swatch featuring the Alpinestars logo, but just above that you can see some fancy 'One of One' script running along Danica Patrick's arms. This is the Blue # 1 / 1 parallel of her Firesuit Materials insert card, and it's the only one out there.

It popped up on eBay a couple of months ago with a tempting Buy It Now price, but it was still a lot of money for one piece of cardboard. I probably would have paid the full price, but I sent an offer for about 80% of the asking price, and after a few stressful hours the seller accepted it. It was still a lot to pay for a card, but I felt like it was probably the best price I was going to get on a legitimate non-printing plate # 1 / 1 for my Danica Patrick collection. I do wish that it was more apparent at a glance that this is the only one, as it doesn't have a Superfractory sheen or anything to it, and the script gets lost a little in the picture, but I guess you can't have everything. I'm pretty thrilled to have something like this in my driver collection. Now all I need is a patch/auto booklet and I'll be set (mostly set, you're never really done adding to this sort of collection).

As far as the race goes, NASCAR instituted some scoring changes for this season, where every race is divided into multiple stages, and the top ten drivers for each stage get points for the season. They also get end-of-race points. There's more to it, but you need like a math degree or an app or something to keep track of it, because there are also two different kinds of points, playoff points and season points.

Danica finished each of the first two stages in the Daytona 500 as part of the Top 10 drivers, so she got 1 point (10th place) for Stage 1 and 6 points (5th place) for Stage 2. Then she was involved in one of the many wrecks on the day and had to leave the race. It's looking like her final race position will be 33rd place, good for another 4 points. So by my math, she'll finish the race with 11 points total. We'll see where that leaves her overall at the end of the day, but her final position in the standings will be better than 33rd, as she will get credit for running among the leaders for the first two-thirds of the race. It was disappointing to see her get wrecked out, because it looked like she might be able to grab a Top 10 or even a Top 5 finish today.

edit: She got 5 points for her finish in the qualifying race, plus her 11 points for the Daytona 500 stages and finish. That puts her at 16 points total so far on the season, good for 24th in the standings.

A Power Girl Sketch from Across the Atlantic by Arwenn

One of my favorite parts of collecting is adding a new sketch card to my collection. I've started to especially like getting sketches directly from artists, whether by commission or through their stores. I will buy a sketch I like from anywhere, but there is something cool about getting it directly from the artist.

Today's sketch card came all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, as the artist hails from France. This Power Girl sketch was done by artist Arwenn, and I purchased it through his eBay store. This also holds the distinction of being my final eBay purchase of 2016. It took a fair amount of time to get to me, but I've come to expect that from international shipments. There are times, though, when shipments from Japan get to me quicker than items from inside the United States.

Back to the artwork, Arwenn has a pretty distinctive style. A lot of his sketches have that metallic gold border and background, and his art style reminds me of something, like old bookplates or religious art. I wish I could pin down exactly what it reminds me of, but I don't have the art background for that. I took like one Art History class in college over ten years ago, and that's about it for me when it comes to formal art education. He has a few more pieces available featuring other characters I collect, but for now I just went with the Power Girl sketch.

A Dream Pick-Up

Sometimes if I am buying a couple things from an eBay seller, I will search their listings for the names of several players I collect, just to see what they've got. Usually I don't find much, but every so often I will come across something I want. That was the case with this card. The main purchase here was a couple of UFC cards (the Cat Zingano and Rafael Dos Anjos quad relics in this post), but I picked up a nice Hakeem Olajuwon to go along with them. 

This relic card of The Dream comes from 2017-17 Panini Court Kings. It's part of the Vintage Materials insert set. I believe this is the base version. I don't add to my Olajuwon collection all that often, so it was nice to come across this nice-looking relic card. I probably wouldn't have purchased it alone with the cost of shipping, but splitting the shipping three ways made it a better proposition for me.

It is serially-numbered, with this being copy # 132 / 149. The other parallels are # / 25 and # 1 / 1. I doubt I will be adding them anytime soon. I like any card that brings up the Rockets' two Championship seasons. They are one of the best teams in the NBA right now, but there are some really good teams at the very top and I don't know if James Harden + the other guys can beat any of the super teams out there across a 7-game series, let alone a couple of them in a row.

The Ultimate Gamble

A few days ago, P-Town Tom of the Eamus Catuli! blog posted the results of an experiment with Topps Now code cards he purchased on eBay. These cards are inserted in packs of 2017 Topps Series 1, and each code offers a chance that you will win a Topps Now card from the 2017 season. To see how he did, click on through and have a read.

It sounded fun enough to me, so I looked at lots on eBay and found one that seemed like a pretty good deal, $8.66 shipped for 12 unused code cards. They arrived in the mail today, and I entered the codes into the Topps website.

I did pretty well with my codes, getting three winners out of my twelve tries. The 2017 Topps Now cards I won are 10, 130, and 146. I went back to the 2016 listing to see what I might have won if these were for last year.

If 2017 were 2016, I would have won:

10 - Brandon Crawford, San Francisco Giants – Brings Giants from Near No-Hitter to Walk-Off Win (Apr. 8) – Print Run 316

130 - Michael Fulmer, Detroit Tigers – Set Club Rookie Mark for Scoreless IP Streak (June 6) – Print Run 636

146 - Michael Fulmer, Detroit Tigers – Increases Scoreless IP Streak to 28 1/3 Innings with Strong Outing (June 12) – Print Run 658

Well, what are the odds of that? In the fictional world of yesteryear, I would have won two Michael Fulmer cards, along with one Brandon Crawford release. Hopefully my 2017 cards will match my player collections a little better. I've noticed that all of the redemptions I've seen so far come relatively early in the potential checklist, probably because Topps is reserving later numbers for Series 2 and maybe Update. I imagine that while Topps may not have a quota for Now cards, they probably have a general idea of which card number they expect to be at on a given date.

I might try to grab another lot or two of these over the course of the year, if I can get a good price on them. This lot turned out to be a pretty good deal, with me getting three Now cards for about the price of one.

eBay Sketch Cards: Leia by Chad Layer

My twins turn 6 today, so I don't have a lot of time for posting. There is birthday stuff going on. They grow up quickly.

There was a seller offloading several Leia sketch cards on eBay, and I picked up a few of them. There is another seller right now who has listed about 15 sketches from many artists, all featuring Leia as Jabba's slave. I am not as keen on that outfit as I am some of her other ones, but they are reasonably priced and there are some good artists in the group. I wish I could grab several of them up. There are some good deals on some in-demand artists in the bunch. But back to the cards I actually did pick up, here is a sketch featuring Leia with the famous cinnamon bun hair, the white dress, and the blaster from A New Hope.

The artist is Chad Layer, who is active on Facebook and Instagram. I don't know much else about him. This is the first time I've seen his work. But this is a pretty cool sketch. I was happy to get it for my collection. He does a lot of pop culture work featuring popular video game and film properties. He also has done quite a bit of Warhammer 40k fan art, which I think is pretty cool. I have begun putting my gaming miniatures in the attic because I don't have space or time for them right now, but I would really like to get my life together and start painting them again.

2016 BBM Curling Card Set: Chess on Ice

While I was browsing for bowling cards at my usual site for Japanese wax, I noticed that they were located in a section of the store for 'Other' sports. That made me wonder what other sports might have card products, so I clicked on over to see what they had. There were plenty of things, like tennis, Shining Venus, rugby, and sumo cards. But what caught my eye were these:

Yup, those are cards for the sport of curling. This is the 2016 BBM Curling Card Set: Chess on Ice. I think this is the first curling set from BBM, but I am not 100% sure on that. This photograph shows the top of the box. You get 41 cards in the box, a 39-card base set and 2 autographs.

The bottom of the box has a checklist and a couple more pictures of the base cards in the set. There are 20 base cards for the female curlers (in pink on the left), and 19 for male curlers (on the right in blue). I believe that the left-most column in each entry is the name of the curler, while the rightmost column is their team.

This is the underside of the box lid. The serial number for the set is in the upper right, with my set being # 0668 / 2000. The bulk of the design is what appears to be an excerpt from 'The Rules of Curling' that explains the spirit of the game. My translation app tells me that the English text at the bottom says the same thing as the Japanese text at the top.

Finally, we get to the cards nestled in the box, restrained by a band of paper. There is a plain white backing card to the rear of the stack, protecting the cards from the adhesive on the paper.

Here are four of the vertical base cards, two from each gender. Inside the colored band is the curler's name in both English and kanji. Below that is the team name followed by the curler's position (skip, second, third, or lead). In the lower corner is a small graphic depicting the House, which is the bullseye that determines scoring.

The card backs have a headshot as well as a virtual wall of text. The colored boxes features the usual information, like name, team, position, birth date, birthplace, height, weight, and blood type. The smaller box below the photo seems to be a list of achievements, and the larger box appears to be some kind of survey answers where the curler gets to talk about their life, hobbies, and things of that nature.

The horizontal cards contain all of the same information. They are just formatted a little differently. The curler's name runs along the left side of the card, and the team name and position are located at the bottom.

The backs of the horizontal cards are also horizontal, and contain the same design elements as the vertical cards, just positioned differently. I am still not sure why the female portion of the set has 20 cards and the males get have 19 cards. I was under the impression that a curling team has four individuals on it, but most of these groups have five listed in the checklist. Maybe they all run with alternates or substitute players? One of the male teams only has four names listed, and that leads to the imbalance in the checklists. I don't know if they left someone out or if that team just has four people on it.

According to the official checklist, each curler has a total of four different autographs in the checklist. The horizontal format cards are the more common autographs, with the black ink versions having 49-50 cards each and the special ink variations (blue for men, red for women) having 25-26 copies for women and 20-21 copies for men.

I pulled a regular ink version of Chinami Yoshida 吉田知那美, who has appeared in several major events, including medals at the 2016 World Championship and 2013, 2015, and 2016 Pacific-Asia Curling Championships. She also appeared in the 2014 Winter Olympics, although Team Japan placed 5th and did not medal. Looking at her Wikipedia page tells me that most teams do carry an alternate, so that explains why most teams in the checklist have five names attached to them.

My son saw me editing the photo for this card, and he asked me, "Why do you have that card? Is that a janitor?" I tried to explain to him what curling was and I showed him a video of curling on YouTube. He saw them sweeping in front of the rock and asked, "Why are there two janitors?" I guess he'll have to figure out curling on his own some day.

The vertical autographs are more scarce than the horizontal cards. The black-ink base versions are limited to 20 copies across the board, while the colored-ink variations only have 10 copies apiece.

My vertical autograph is a black-ink base version of Satsuki Fujisawa 藤澤 五月. She and Chinami Yoshida are currently on the same team, and they are actually cards 1 and 2 in the base set. Both of the autographs I pulled in this set have nice curling doodles added, as well as the curler's name in English and kanji. Very nice, and much better than you get from most ballplayers.

This was a pretty fun set to add to my collection. It looks like my source for these has sold out of them, so I may not be able to pick up any more of them unless there is a restock. It looks like the price has increased slightly since my pre-order went through, from about $19 + shipping (postage from Japan for this order was $40 split between 5 items) to about $24 + shipping now.

No Stats on the Backs of These Cards

I try not to get sucked in by these, but every so often I wind up giving in and buying Topps Vault blank backs, encased cards usually distributed through the Topps eBay store. The fronts are the same as the base cards you pull from packs, the backs are generally blank, maybe containing a Topps Vault 1 / 1 hologram sticker with a serial number.

This Randa Markos card hails from the 2015 Topps UFC Champions set. Markos is one of the fighters I collect, but I have started to seek out other fighters more heavily, as I don't think she has any relics or autos out, and her recent record doesn't place her on most high-end card release checklists. She will be fighting Carla Esparza in a couple of hours at UFC Fight Night: Lewis vs. Browne. Esparza is the #3-ranked Women's Strawweight contender, and is rumored to be taking the fight because she in financial distress and wants to avoid another top contender for now. Markos is not ranked in the top 15, so she's facing quite a challenge in this one.She really needs a win, as her recent record hasn't been all that impressive. The two do not like each other, so hopefully they put on a good show this evening.

Here's the back of the card. You can see the sticker. I think I got the corresponding certificate of authenticity in the package with the item. Apparently there isn't a database of serial numbers with item descriptions, so it's hard to validate these things. I don't think anyone is going to forge a Randa Markos card, though, but that could be a consideration if you're in the market for superstar items.

I thought maybe Topps had updated all of the blank back cards to these Beckett Grading Services holders, but it looks like the 2017 Topps Series 1 cards are in the same holder style as the Randa Markos card. All of the 2016 Topps Mini Baseball cards are in the Beckett holders. I guess maybe Topps didn't have a bunch of holders in the mini size, and made some agreement with Beckett to use their holders and labels for this set.

Jon Singleton is a player I collect pretty heavily, but his star has lost a lot of shine over the last couple of years, and he really needs to have a great Spring Training if he wants to continue with the Astros in any capacity, or make himself attractive to a team that is looking for a 1B/DH guy. It's hard to remember that he's still only 25 years old.

Leia Sketch Card Commission by Frank A. Kadar

This is the second of three weekends in a row that I am stuck at work. It kind of sucks, but I chose to do it because it opens up a little more money for us to use at the Salt Lake Comic Con FanX next month.

Every time we go to a convention, I go through a weird cycle of emotions. I get excited, make up a plan, and purchase the tickets. Then I go through a period where I think of all the things that could go wrong, feel bad about the expense of it all, and worry that we won't be getting the best value out the experience. I consider cutting my losses by not attending at all. Sometimes these bad feelings extend into the early parts of the event itself. Then my wife talks me out of going home early and we come up with a decent plan for seeing the things we want to see. Once I get over that hump, I generally have a good time and remember the event fondly. But even though I know this roller coaster happens every time, I feel powerless to stop it from happening. Right now I'm going through the phase where I wonder if we should even go. I am trying to get through it without driving my wife over the edge of sanity with all of my wishy-washy worries.

I would like it if there were a little more information on the website about exhibitors and booths in the Artist Alley. They've announced a handful of high-profile comic book artists as guests, but events like the Emerald City Comic Con have lists of artists and vendors already posted, with many of the artists outlining commission prices and policies in their listings. The Salt Lake Comic Con crowd seems to enjoy rolling out the lists bit by bit over what feels like forever. I prefer to have as much notice as possible on everything, so their methods just cause me anxiety and frustration. I'm sure I'll feel better once there is a list.

About a month ago, I showed off a Power Girl sketch I commissioned from artist Frank A. Kadar. I liked it so much that I went back to his online shop and ordered another sketch for my collection.

This one features the subject of my other main sketch card collection, Leia from Star Wars. Kadar does some great work and seems to get commissions done in a timely manner. This sketch jumps right up there on the list of favorite Leia sketches in my collection. I like all the detail in the art, especially Leia's face and hair, and I enjoy the colorful backgrounds he does on his cards. I like browsing eBay for sketch card bargains, but I also enjoy being able to get exactly what I want by commissioning sketches from artists whose work I follow.

I Got a Spring Training Invitation: 2017 Topps NOW Baseball

I came home today to find an envelope with Topps branding on my desk. It looked similar in size and shape to the one they sent out during the holidays.

Inside was a Topps NOW greeting card with a Spring Training 2017 logo.

Inside the greeting card was a mention of my status as a member of the 2016 Topps Now family, and some information about the roll-out of the 2017 Topps Now program, starting with the release of Topps Now Opening Day team sets, which are currently for sale on the Topps website. There was also a trading card in the envelope, which previews the 2017 Topps Now card design.

And here it is. It features MLB superstar Mike Trout, and carries a code on the back good for 25% off of one Opening Day team set per customer. I assume that since it's not a scratch-off code or anything, I am free to share it with the world. I think the 15-card sets are selling for $49.99, and your team can get bonus cards in its set by reaching certain milestones, like having a pitcher throw a perfect game, a player who hits for the cycle, or being in first place at the All-Star break. The card design is pretty slick. I think it looks all right, although I think I'd prefer the wedge along the bottom to be a little more transparent. I wasn't really planning on getting an Astros Opening Day set, but I might think about it at 25% off. I think the team sets are on sale until April 4th.

Although Topps is clearly trying to keep 2016 customers in the fold as 2017 buyers, this was a pretty cool way to do it. It would be hard to find someone who would say no to a free Mike Trout card, and the packaging and presentation on this package is very nice. Although they rolled out the design earlier today on Facebook, people who live to the East of me probably actually did get their preview of the 2017 set before everyone else. Thanks, Topps!

2014 BBM P★League Fairies on the Lane

In December I showed off a boxed set of Japanese women's bowling cards produced by BBM, 2016 BBM P★League All Stars. P★League is a particular bowling tournament that usually also appears on a DVD boxed set, involving a group of professional bowlers who compete on a rotational basis. Sometimes amateur bowlers can qualify to be in the tournaments. I could have the details wrong, as things are a little fuzzy for me when it comes to the Wikipedia articles and other references I've found so far. The important thing here is that there are trading cards, which have been released as boxed sets for most of the years between 2009 and 2016 (they skipped 2011). I picked up a couple more of them, and I'm going to show off the 2014 set here. The 2016 set was called All-Stars, the 2015 set is called Very Merry Xmas, and today's set is 2014 BBM P★League Fairies on the Lane. 

Here is the box lid. It features photos of all the bowlers, as well as a little information about the contents of the box. My translation abilities are limited to scanning the box with Google Translate on my phone, so I can give a rough idea of what the box says. Along the top it tells us that the 24 bowlers who competed in Season 3 can be found in this set of cards. There is a Season 3 DVD set, so you could probably buy it and find these bowlers competing.

The part in the middle, underneath the photos, I couldn't really figure out. I don't even really want to try for fear of accidentally being culturally insensitive. The part under the P★League banner says Fairies on the Lane. The white box at the bottom says that a box costs ¥4,000 and that 3,000 sets were made. Just above that is a description of the contents, 50 cards including a regular set and one of each kind of insert card.

The bottom of the box features a checklist and pictures of some of the cards in the set. There are 48 cards in the base set, with each of the 24 bowlers getting a base card and a 'My Happy Moment' subset card. There is a 12-card die-cut insert set, and each bowler gets autograph cards. There is a paragraph mentioning that most autographs will be regular black ink signatures, but there are also parallels.

Here is the underside of the box lid. It's got a group picture of all the bowlers, as well as the serial number for the box (# 1986 / 3000) and several paragraphs which seem to explain the format and rules of the P★League tournament. I could figure out bits and pieces, but not enough to be doing any explaining here.

And finally, here is what the cards look like nestled in the box. I've scanned some of each type to show below.

This is the base card design, which makes up the first 24 cards in the set. The fronts of the cards are in English, while the backs are in Japanese. The card backs have quite a bit of information. Up at the top is stuff like birthdate, home/birthplace?, height, which hand they bowl with, and their bowling license number. In the middle is a little biography. I think this one even mentions that Hiromi Matsunaga wears glasses, but I could be reading it wrong. Down at the bottom are some statistics. I think they might be related to Season 1 and Season 2 of the tournament, but I am not sure on that.

The next 24 cards in the set are a subset called 'My Happy Moment.' Each one features a different writing style, and some have little pictures and whatnot. My translation app can't process much for these, but my guess is that the cards feature hobbies or memories that make each bowler happy.

Here are a few more of the base cards. Most of these bowlers appear in the 2016 set as well, so there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of turnover across the seasons. I imagine that bowling is like any other sport. There's not a lot of room for new blood at the top. In the background of the photos you can see all some of the set for the show. They just set it up in the middle of a bowling alley, and in the DVD set I have you can see workers putting up the walls and everything around a couple of bowling lanes. They don't have a dedicated bowling alley just for this event.

Here are some more card backs. These have the same format as the previous card I showed.

While the base cards have action photos, the 'My Happy Moment' cards have posed shots of the competitors with their balls.

You can see the variety on these card backs. Some of the women wrote long paragraphs, while others fill the space with doodles and pictures.

This was the die-cut insert I pulled, featuring Mitsuki Nakamura and Hitomi Andoh. Again, I am exactly the opposite of an expert at this, but I think the backs feature little word bubbles with the bowler's good luck charm. I am pretty sure that Misuki Nakamura's is a necklace and Hitomi Andoh's is a small unicorn. The text down at the bottom is a repeat of their base card backs, with name, birth date, hometown, and probably some other stuff.

The last card in my box was this autograph of Shoko Furuta. It's a sticker autograph and I believe it is the base version, numbered # 056 / 100. The PBA 506 on the right side is her bowling license number. It's a pretty decent card design, and the bowlers appear to get just as creative with their signatures as the wrestlers do in the True Heart sets. Looking at my autographs from other sets, it looks like most/all of them incorporate their license numbers into their signatures.

That does it for this set. These are fun cards, and definitely something a little out of the ordinary to inject a bit of variety into my card collection. I will probably be trying to add some of the older sets to my collection, as well as looking forward to what the 2017 set will look like. I haven't chosen a favorite bowler or anything, but I might do that and try to collect an autograph timeline for them.